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MARCH ON 




By 

GEORGE MADDEN MARTIN 
March On 

Children in the Mist 
A Warwickshire Lad 
Emmy Lou’s Road to Grace 
Selina 

These Are Appleton Books 

D. APPLETON & COMPANY 
Publishers New York 


T 2*8 A 


MARCH ON 


GEORGE (MADDEN) MARTIN 

AUTHOR OF 

“CHILDREN IN THE MIST/' “EMMY LOU’S ROAD TO ©RACE/’ ETC. 



D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
NEW YORK : : LONDON : : MCMXXI 







COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



< 

c r 
< v « 
<■ • 


/ 

NOV -3 1921 


©C1.A627719 


ai- nr/fc 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



'Vi © V* 


PART I 


“The Past is also Stored in Thee” 


MARCH ON 


CHAPTER I 

S TEPHEN JANVIER enjoyed supremely those 
traits of character which, according to him, dis- 
tinguished his elders. It did not occur to this 
lively young Kentuckian that he in his turn might be an 
out-and-out romantic, insular, colorful, tenacious and — 
lovable. On a June evening, the summer that Stephen 
was twenty-seven, he brought up on the threshold of 
his uncle’s parlor. 

Parlor! It was this word occurring on his lips that 
checked him. Late comer as he was, he paused in the 
doorway and chuckled as, beaming amiably, he gazed 
about him at the couples and groups within the room* 
the girls in the all-too-scandalously brief draperies of 
the moment, the men in blue coats and white flannels. 

One of Stephen’s generation on a time argued with 
an elder concerning this word. 

“It isn’t said any more, parlor, you know; it’s obso- 
lete like the thing it stood for.” 

“But it is said; we say it.” 

The older generation spoke according to its nature, 
expressive of its own individualities, and the point of 
view instinctive with it, it being nothing of its concern 
that any creatures else happen not to think with it. 
And this older stock has had its share in making the 
3 


4 


MARCH ON 


state what it is to-day, for puissant and contumacious 
tenacity. 

The room that Stephen so beamingly surveyed was 
liberal in its dimensions, ample in its width, and in 
length twice this width. What that the owner of the 
house, the uncle of Stephen, had done what he could 
to modernize this home of his forbears? What that 
the room rejoiced in shaded electroliers and hardwood 
floors? In the definitive term of this older stock, it 
not only was still a parlor, but a saloon parlor. 

The affair this evening was of that nature called 
informal by the modern hostess as she gives her invita- 
tions over the telephone; an inclusive term in the 
opinion of these elders, covering all degrees of irregu- 
larities and laxities. 

“Gross improprieties touching on lawlessness,” they 
were known to say, “which, did these occur at Wei- 
mar’s road house at the crossroads, would be accounted 
license by the county police.” 

Weimar no longer ran this road house with its ad- 
joining beer garden and dancing pavilion; these elders 
in justice to him would add this, claiming that the road 
house in his time was reputable enough ; that he merely 
owned the property nowadays, and was the lessor. To- 
day he was a brewer of beer, not a road house dispenser 
of the beverage, and lived with his two sons and his 
four daughters in his city home overlooking the park. 
A tapster by training when he, forty-five years ago and 
just arrived in America, took service at the road house, 
to-day he was rated at something over two millions; 
and his sister Ottille, a tailoress by trade, who came to 
America from Germany with her brother, to-day was 
the widow of a prosperous merchant tailor. 

It was past eleven o’clock. Isaac Shelby Timmons, 


MARCH ON 


5 


the colored butler, was refilling the punch bowl, which 
sat amid a mighty company of glasses on a table in the 
embrasure of a window. This saddle-colored person, 
portly and urbane, contributed both deportment and 
decorum to the occasion. The captious might claim 
that the two others of his race who were present did 
not. Yet just as Weimar, the brewer, has his part in 
the events yet to be set down, so the two youths about 
to be depicted have their place in this story. 

Julius Buck and William McKinley Coffin, colored 
youths of the neighborhood, sat beside a victrola in the 
hall, plying the instruments of ragtime, snare drum, 
bass drum, and cymbal. A fiddle in its day, in the 
hands of some elderly and staid forbear of these youths, 
some great-mannered old darkey in a swallow-tailed 
coat, blue with brass buttons, was considered seemly 
and desirable in this parlor. Whereas canned music y 
punctuated by the tom-tom of drum and cymbal as 
wielded by Julius and William, was held by those whose 
memories went back to the former day and its fiddle, 
to outrage the sense of things decent and fitting. 
Again Stephen chuckled. 

It was past eleven and he, arriving later than he 
intended, was the more briskly ready for a partner, 
being as untiring a dancer as any in the room. 

An untiring dancer? The best stepper in the crowd 
if practice makes for perfect. He was pausing in the 
doorway as couple after couple went by, waiting for 
that response within himself which, pointing him to his 
fancy, would speed him to a break-in, and the capture 
of some other man’s choice. 

He was a big, upstanding person, his alertness tem- 
pered by his easy poise. As standards in his commu- 
nity regarding masculine beauty went, he was no better 


6 


MARCH ON 


looking than he should be, these standards being influ- 
enced by a Victorian past, and inclining still to the 
romantic; whereas the features of Stephen were large, 
and his cheekbones pronounced. 

This young man with the chestnut hair, and eyes of 
hazel flecked with gray, would have been deemed 
homely here in his native habitat but for his size, a 
bodily attribute in the male which in Kentucky frankly 
is worshiped; his nonflickering gaze, no mean thing 
itself in his state, and his smile which was ardent, in- 
deed luminous, and according to where bestowed, 
caressing. Women, certainly Stephen’s own women- 
kind, spoiled him because of this smile. 

Charlie, the son of the house and the cousin of 
Stephen, came by guiding Evelyn, his young wife of a 
year, the two signaling with eyes and heads to Stephen 
as they passed, their dumb show at once a welcome, 
and a reminder to proceed to duty. It was Evelyn who 
by telephone, had summoned these young people who 
were here to-night, from town, and the near and far 
country places. 

’Genie Harrison passed, a little person in a blue silk 
dress, with a rosebud mouth and entirely knowing eyes, 
dipping and pausing with abruptness in the recovery, 
as she went by with Bennie Harlan, her partner. 
’Genie avowed herself modern; defined the term for 
you if asked so to do; and said she rejoiced in what 
she was. 

Bennie, who was the son of the Presbyterian min- 
ister at Ashe, twelve miles across country, stood amaz- 
ing high on his thin legs. He only lately, since his new 
job as reporter on an afternoon paper in the city, had 
taken his place with the crowd, this probably being the 
first time the youngster had had any money for him- 


MARCH ON 


7 


self. He only recently, too, had been thrown with 
’Genie, and it was clear to him who runs that the boy 
quite tremendously had fallen for her. From his stilt- 
like eminence above her auburn head, he never took his 
eyes off her. ’Genie’s mother was a Colonial Dame, 
and her father was a member of The Society of The 
Cincinnati, a pair who in their persons, as in the per- 
formance of their obligations, private and public, 
carried their credentials. 

And their only child, the rejoicing and modern 
Eugenia? There was no back that one could see to 
the waist of this person’s dress, there was very little 
front beyond shoulder straps of rosebuds that matched 
her mouth, and there was nothing to speak of in the 
way of sides to her skirt. She wore blue silk stockings 
of high-reaching length, nor dared the fancy surmise 
how little else. Blunt and plain-spoken young ’un, six 
years the junior of Stephen! 

Emily Gwynne and McHenry Stuart passed. Emily 
was a beauty of long reign, a contemporary of Stephen. 
Her frock lacked the rosebuds with which ’Genie eked 
out the absence of a waist, but her lips were made up 
like a poppy which better suited her. Dress and lips 
screamed their modern note, and belied Emily, who 
was a hark-back. She wasn’t clever, and she was faith- 
ful. McHenry was up to date, and should pick a 
flapper such as ’Genie, who was on to him! 

These girls and these men here to-night, were 
Stephen’s crowd, his set, his associates, and not a few 
of them, his kindred. Sally Clarke was a cousin, Bettie 
Craig was another. 

And this night in question? His gaze went across 
the room to an open window. It was June, and it was 
Kentucky. The night just left behind him, and the 


8 


MARCH ON 


world of varied landscape rolling and extended, were 
drenched with the scent of the one, and magical be- 
neath a high-riding moon, through the beauty of the 
other. 

His gaze came back from the window and fell upon 
a girl. She was dancing with Rowan Hart, a youth 
from out in the state, who had come this past winter to 
the city to attend the law school. 

The girl danced extremely well. There was a com- 
posure about her way of doing it, together with an air 
of entire propriety, which, taking the performance on 
its achieved results, lent rather than detracted charm. 
Dancing to a snare drum and cymbal may be lifted, 
then, to an art? 

This amiably beaming Stephen now regarding her, 
scion of those colorful and puissant sires, was secretly 
and unalterably fastidious, and knew it. As fastidious 
in his exacting soul as he in his outward habit was cath- 
olic, in general playing so many favorites there was no 
favorite. This fastidiousness leaped now in exultation 
to his lips. The American experiment then produces 
daughters, children of the line, in themselves at once its 
vindication and its promise? Pearls of price in the 
shell of its past? 

He swore softly at himself for a cad, and forgot it. 
This girl dancing with young Hart gave him instant 
joy. For one so young, and the lines of her body were 
youthfully thin, she was exceedingly distinguished, 
straight and elegant, her head well-carried, her nose a 
trifle high-bridged, and her slight shoulders sloping 
into slight and lovely arms. And for one who, in car- 
riage and manner, was so composed, she had an amaz- 
ing brilliancy of pulsing color, the crimson that came 
and went upon her cheeks being as rich and flawless as 


MARCH ON 


9 


it was unusual, a crimson that more often is seen on 
the firm facial contours of some glowing and proudly 
handsome child. 

Stephen took a breath, a long and oddly deep breath, 
like a runner stooped and about to leap to his course. 
He searched his brain as to who this girl might be. 
Somewhere in his past he knew this cool face, this small, 
high nose! Ever after he declared that he at this 
moment, was conscious of a sense of impending happen- 
ing, of impelling fate, imperative and urging. 

There had been affairs in Stephen’s time. He was 
twenty-seven, and preeminently human. Infatuations 
and episodes characteristic not only of so buoyant a 
nature, but of youth and nature wherever found, not 
alone in Jefferson County, Kentucky, but in Kentucky 
at large, and the round world as well. 

These episodes must have scattered from his mem- 
ory as mists before the morning, since he was saying to 
himself that here, in the person of this girl, was the 
apotheosis of proud and lovely woman at last, as he 
had dreamed of her. 

Having avowed this, straightening as he did so, he 
felt upon him the eyes, accusing and reproachful, of a 
lady; of his own great-great-grandmother. She who, 
not so long since renovated and restored with the rest 
of the old interior about her, looked down out of her 
carved and gilded frame from above a marble-topped 
pier-table. A young woman she, with flowing chestnut 
hair, wearing the bodice, fichu, and long sleeves, asso- 
ciated in the modern mind with the person of Madame 
Roland. 

A chatain beauty was this great-great-grandmother of 
Stephen; her eyes chestnut brown like her hair, which 
fell, loosely curling, upon her white neck and bosom, 


10 


MARCH ON 


with heavy and lustrous undulations; her countenance 
a little round; an angel face in which sweetness near 
to poignancy, was allied to mischief; with lips on which 
laughter played archly and easily; and a glance which 
sparkled with life and intelligence. 

The daughter of a well-to-do avocat of Marseilles, a 
refugee from the Paris of the revolution to the young 
republic of America, she was the first mistress of this 
house, the early arbiter of the destinies of this room, 
and the lady for whom her own great-great-grandson 
in the tender years of his boyhood, cherished a secret 
and burningly romantic passion. 

Stealing into this room, it was his grandfather’s 
house in those days, and sitting huddled, hands clasping 
his boyish ankles, on the thick pile of the gayly flowered 
Victorian carpet, amid Victorian rosewood furniture, 
a little lad in knickerbockers, belted jacket, and broad, 
round linen collar, he gazed up at his great-great-grand- 
mother, filled with a worshiping ardor, and the glamour 
of the traditions surrounding her. 

Not willingly does the past surrender us, if indeed 
it ever does ! Already it was astir, alert to measure its 
strength with this cool girl of Stephen Janvier’s own 
day, who in fancy already had intrigued him. 

A hand fell on the young man’s shoulder, and a voice 
making itself heard above the beat of the drum and 
cymbal addressed him. 

“Well, Stevie!” 


CHAPTER II 


S TEPHEN faced about in the doorway to confront 
the long nose, and the spare person of Colonel 
Tecumseh Craig. Behind this tall, lean figure 
stood the Colonel’s host, Mr. Stephen Janvier, the 
uncle of Stephen. 

“Well, my boy, here at last, are you?” 

The greeting this time came from Stephen’s uncle, 
his voice pitched to surmount the din. The nephew 
gathered the two were come from the library across 
the hall, that conceded retreat for the men of the Jan- 
vier household; a room so-called from the force of 
custom and long habit. The Janviers, past and present, 
were not students, or great readers. 

The Colonel who for three score, ten, and six years, 
had felicitated himself that he was a Kentuckian, wore 
a suit of white linen which flapped loosely and, as it 
were, belligerently on his person, and — a highly char- 
acteristic touch — a rose adorned his buttonhole. 

Mr. Janvier, less a bristling personality than the 
older man, by comparison was short, and inclined to 
portliness. Smooth-shaven, his clipped black hair 
touched on the temples with gray, and wearing white 
flannels and white shoes, he radiated content and well- 
being. 

Two other voices addressing Stephen, this time fem- 
inine voices, lifted themselves. 

“Well, Stevie, good evening.” 

ii 


12 


MARCH ON 


“Well, my son.” 

The young man swept about, facing the parlor again, 
this time to greet his aunt and his mother who, by a 
succession of tackings from point to point about the 
room, following a margin of safety close to the walls, 
had reached this momentary haven. 

Mrs. Stephen Janvier, a dark-eyed and vivacious 
matron, wore a brown tulle evening dress come through 
the season past the worse for wear, and in consequence 
easy to the mind and body alike, as she would tell you. 
Her bare shoulders were youthful-looking beneath a 
tulle scarf, the same frankly worn to conceal certain 
wreckage in the body of the dress, and her face was 
delicately irregular, with fine dark brows, one slightly 
and quizzically higher than the other. She was a Mis- 
sissippi, born in Vicksburg during Farragut’s bom- 
bardment of that city, and was fifty-one years old or 
young, as one took it, and her. 

Helen Janvier, the widowed mother of Stephen, was 
fair-haired and comely, her gown of mauve chiffon as 
free from reproach as that of her sister-in-law was 
shabby. She was a Virginian, and a kinswoman of 
Colonel Craig. 

Julius Buck and William Coffin who, in view of an 
approaching and triumphant climax, to their drums and 
cymbal had added bones and a triangle, here ceased so 
suddenly as to leave the eardrums aching with the 
silence. A glance toward these youths seated in the 
hall near the stairway showed them wiping their faces 
and mopping the backs of their necks. Julius was 
saddle-colored, and William was a rich shade of brown. 

Mrs. Stephen Janvier took advantage of the lull to 
address Colonel Craig. 

“Well, Colonel Te, I’ve secured what I told you at 


MARCH ON 


13 


dinner I meant to have before the evening was over. 
Mrs. Wing’s granddaughter has agreed to serve with 
me the day after to-morrow as my assistant at the polls 
in the school commission primary.” 

Stephen stared at Anne Janvier. He had the infor- 
mation now that he desired. 

“Thank you ever so much,” he murmured beneath 
his breath, turning as he did so, and in the light of his 
aunt’s remark, viewing again the girl with young Hart. 

The dancers, brought to a halt by the defection of 
Julius and William, were refusing to abide by it, break- 
ing into a storm of handclaps, jeers, and excitations; 
not a few feet, these feminine more often than mascu- 
line, clacking and tapping upon the polished floor. 

Stephen sought, found, and with yet keener interest 
gazed at the granddaughter of old Mrs. Lucy Wing. 
To be sure he knew this profile, clean-cut, and almost 
too self-sufficient. Something like fourteen years rolled 
back: 

A small girl in a velvet bonnet and velvet cloak gazed 
at him from large black eyes, an immense doll held close 
to her person behind a muff of white fur. She must 
have been about six years old. Impeccable from her 
boots of white kid to her curls, shining and irreproach- 
able, and enthroned in a certain austere but familiar 
room, upon a straight chair, its wooden seat hard and 
unrelenting, the boy of fourteen at whom she gazed 
had laughed in spite of himself, at the cool little crea- 
ture, and her haughty small nose. 

He saw her eight years later. Returning home from 
college for the Christmas vacation, he was taken by 
his mother to call on Mrs. Wing, who was spending 
the winter in town. Young persons in his city, and by 
inheritance of a certain social standing, on reaching a 


14 


MARCH ON 


suitable age, invariably were taken to call on this 
person. 

During the visit, the granddaughter had burst into 
the room, a school girl in her teens, suggesting as she 
came toward the group some glowingly painted figure 
which seems to rush forward from the canvas ; a young 
creature with radiantly crimson cheeks, and ebon hair, 
shoulder-long, and loose about her neck. At sight of 
the callers, and succeeding a brief presentation of her- 
self to the visitors by her grandmother, she had re- 
treated with great propriety, she and her haughty nose. 

This nose had challenged from the start. Stephen 
swore softly to himself that it had. The reference just 
made by his aunt to the polls and the primary, sug- 
gesting as it did that the granddaughter of Mrs. Wing 
might be brainy and fussed with ideas, might be pos- 
sessed of that too possible blight to human felicity, an 
intellect; this reference with its attendant alarms was 
lost sight of in the superior challenge of the nose. 

The clamor of jeers and excitations within the parlor 
grew. Julius and William, exponents to the limits of 
their abilities of a people’s soul expressed in noise, put 
away their handkerchiefs, and prepared to resume their 
activities. Grapevine intelligence conveying this fact 
from the hall to the parlor, the clamor of dissatisfac- 
tion ceased, an ecstatic hooting of approval replacing 
it, the while the dancers made ready, the flushed Cory- 
bants of the one sex, already stepped within the arms 
of the other. 

Julius and William burst forth with vigor, offering 
this time a one-step, “Dance with Everybody but Your 
Wife,” played with undiminished fervor and ticklish 
variations which got next to you, certain of the Cory- 
bants in the parlor, snapping their fingers, and sway- 


MARCH ON 


i5 


ing with their hips as they and their partners moved off. 

A jubilant male, catching fire from the other sex, 
lifted a tenor voice in a high and sweet falsetto as he 
stepped out, carrying above the orchestration, the air 
and words of this evidently favorite gem, other voices 
taking up the suggestion, and supporting the singer with 
a wordless and droning accompaniment. 

Bennie Harlan and Rowan Hart had exchanged 
partners, Rowan appropriating ’Genie, and Bennie 
moving off with his arm about the granddaughter of 
Mrs. Wing. The cheek of the cub on his stiltlike high 
legs, with his yellow hair slicked back from an ingenu- 
ous brow, the nerve of his arm, moving off with her! 

Colonel Tecumseh Craig was addressing Stephen. 
But what of that, since Stephen, despite his bodily con- 
junction, in intent and spirit was elsewhere? 

It was Colonel Te’s characteristic to be talking; to 
talk on ; and still on ; dwelling upon a day when the sun 
shone brighter than in this second decade of the twen- 
tieth century; when the women of his state, and of his 
section of the republic, were more beautiful, more 
womanly, more admirable, and more seemly; and the 
men unashamedly, and by creed and custom, were 
courtly and chivalric. 

Stephen took delight in these idiosyncrasies of his 
elders. But not at this moment. Right now he was 
the stern and absorbed spectator, silent and intent, of 
Bennie Harlan and his movements; permitting this 
youth who had guided his lady out upon the floor, to 
slip into the alternate swing and halt of the measure; 
then himself departing in the middle of a peroration 
from the Colonel, striding boldly out between the 
couples, and making his way across the room. 

The group left behind thus abruptly, startled by the 


MARCH ON 


1 6 


impetuosity of the young man’s plunge, showed amuse- 
ment as they watched him. A ship in full career he 
suggested, according to Mrs. Stephen Janvier, sails 
filled, and pennants streaming. 

Bearing down he touched Bennie Harlan on his 
serge-clad shoulder. As this person turned his head to 
discover the source of the interruption, his limpidly 
blue young eyes interrogative beneath the correspond- 
ingly youthful brow, Stephen halted, and opened his 
arms. 

The four elders, watching from the doorway, ever 
after were ready to take oath that he did this thing. 
Opened his arms to the girl, as the neophite his lips 
to the milk and honey, the gifts of God’s grace, as 
Colonel Te phrased it later. And that old Lucy Wing’s 
granddaughter, after a look into his face, came into 
them. 

****** 

Mrs. Stephen Janvier (dryly ). — Stephen generally 
knows what he wants. I didn’t suppose he’d had 
time since he came into the house, ten minutes ago, 
to discover her. 

Mr. Stephen Janvier. — Stephen always knows 
what he wants. He knew what he wanted when he 
defied the family precedents, Washington and Lee, 
and the University of Virginia, and announced that 
for him it was Harvard. 

Mrs. Stephen Janvier. — He knew from the start 
that he meant to follow the family calling, and enter 
the family law firm with you and Charlie. Helen, 
speak up. This family paragon after all, is your 
cygnet, not mine and Stephen’s. 

Helen Janvier (smiling ). — Why should I, so long as 
others will ? 


MARCH ON 


i7 


Colonel Craig (addressing the head of the family 
law firm). — How’s he doing? 

Mr. Stephen Janvier. — I’m satisfied. So is Charlie. 
Stephen thinks clearly, and is a hard worker. I left 
him at the office to-night, finishing some papers prom- 
ised for to-morrow morning. Weimar, the brewer, 
is incorporating his various enterprises under one 
management, looking to his withdrawal as the active 
head. Stephen with some suggestions from Charlie, 
and occasional counsel with me, has handled the 
matter. 

Colonel Te (severely). — Sound? 

Mrs. Stephen Janvier (smiling ). — In these days of 
changing winds within the parties, Colonel, what 
does even so fierce a democrat as you mean by 
sound? 

Mr. Stephen Janvier (himself commonly associated 
in the public mind with that small group of men who 
standing behind the machine , controlled the state ). — 
I think I may say so. What I may define as 
Stephen’s devouring curiosity, inclines him at times 
to take up with questionable associates, and to run 
after strange gods. 

Julius and William here came again to a triumphant 
close, stopping with a finality which this time carried 
conviction to the parlor, the young people coming to a 
halt, and with feminine chatter and feminine laughter, 
trooping out to the porch, some by way of the long 
open windows, others through the doorway, past the 
older people. 

’Genie, the modernist, came by with young Hart. 
Eugenia loved the Colonel. Nevertheless as she 
reached her old friend, she gave a dip with her knee, 


i8 


MARCH ON 


and a flirt of her body, with an eye for the effect of 
this upon him, whereby her emphatically modern skirt, 
slashed as this was on each side, parted. Heavens, 
what a show of modern leg! After which she tripped 
on, with a backward gleeful glance as she went, giv- 
ing a frank if prudent hitch to her rosebud straps, which 
persistently threatened to slip from her shoulders. 

Mrs. Stephen Janvier was no better than she should 
be. She sought to rally Colonel Tecumseh. Mr. Jan- 
vier dropped his eyeglasses on their ribbon. He had 
been regarding the granddaughter of Mrs. Wing, who 
at this moment, in the company of his nephew, was dis- 
appearing through a long window of the parlor, on to 
the porch. 

“Too bad of ’Genie, now admit it, Colonel Te. She 
intended to shock us, of course. Even so, it cannot but 
make the judicious grieve.” This from Anne Janvier, 
who never was judicious in her life ! 

Colonel Craig exploded. Kentuckians of his day 
and type, those to the manner born, have a habit of 
mind, a manner of spirit, a deportment of soul, as of 
person. With these there is a fashion of greeting a 
friend, of acknowledging an acquaintance, of surveying 
an enemy; a manner of wearing a coat, of entering the 
club, of coming into church, of proceeding down the 
aisle at the theater. With such as he, there is a pro- 
scribed phraseology, an accepted violence of expression, 
as vent to indignation. 

“ ‘Grieve,’ did you say, Anne? Grieve? It is so 
repugnant to my soul to see Kentucky’s daughters as I 
behold them here to-night, as I see them elsewhere as 
I go about, tricked out like courtesans and Delilahs, I 
could wish my time were come to turn my back upon my 
world, and go. They jig, they amble, as the poet says, 


MARCH ON 


i9 


and nickname God’s creature, woman, and make their 
wantonness her shame. Little Eugenia Harrison who 
just passed us is the scion of a god-fearing grand- 
mother, and of a grandfather whose political faith I 
never had cause to question. And now, egad, yes, I’ll 
say it, a family reputation a century good, damned with 
the granddaughter’s every mincing dip.” 

His groan was very real. “By gad, Anne, and you, 
Helen, is that stamp and hall-mark which to the world 
meant ‘Southern,’ to vanish from the earth? Is that 
South to be no more, which has performed the functions 
of 'an aristocracy, a class and grade as necessary to 
society as a proletariat? That South which, through- 
out its history, has maintained standards, and insisted 
on values, producing gentlemen and gentlewomen, 
rather than men and women? I ask you, whose sex is 
responsible for these things in our country, since women 
here in America determine the social habit? What 
has brought about this collapse in taste? What has 
conduced to this lowering of our standards? If the 
South, through the laxity of you women, has lost these 
things, it has lost that through which it, as- an asset, 
was most of value to the republic.” 

He turned abruptly, and started for the stairway. 
Emily Gwynne was coming down the steps, and he went 
to meet her. Motherless since her childhood, living 
with her father, Grayson Gwynne, always a bit from 
hand to mouth, now at a hotel, and again boarding, 
Colonel Tecumseh, from her earliest years, had been 
to her that institutional person, the bachelor family 
friend. As she stepped to the floor, he took her hand 
and drew it through his arm. He was fond of Emily, 
fiercely fond if it came as he now believed it, to a crisis. 

McHenry Stuart was tiring of his affair with Emily. 


20 


MARCH ON 


These things are regrettable, but will happen. Colonel 
Te looked to Emily to release McHenry. He winced 
for her that she already had not done so. He spoke to 
her now tenderly. 

“What does one say to his lady at a tom-tom ball, 
my dear? A ragtime dans ant? Does one talk conven- 
tions suited to the nature of the performance, and sug- 
gest that, in the words of the music-hall ditty, * another 
little drink won’t do us any harm’? Or may Age fol- 
low its own phraseology, and propose that we sample 
Isaac’s bowl of punch?” 

The perfectly chiseled nostrils of the girl on the arm 
of the Colonel quivered. She was piteously simple, 
and she at no time, was vocal. She wanted to say that 
in substance to her old friend, which she did not know 
how to say in words. 

She wanted to tell Colonel Te, that his creed, accord- 
ing to himself, was to believe in the ladies ; a tenet in 
these articles of his faith being the exaltation of woman. 
She wanted to tell him more. 

She probably never heard the term, sex-solidarity, 
and would not have understood it if she had. Femi- 
nism, the word of the hour, for her had little meaning. 
But she was of her day. 

The enormity of her offending was that McHenry 
had asked for her affection; and she had given it. 
Whatever her times of piteous suffering since, however 
imprudent she was, and at times desperate, she was 
conscious that in this measuring of wills, hers against 
his, these girls here to-night, the most of whom were her 
juniors, were with her. She was aware that in her t 
these younger girls saw, not the struggle of one woman 
against one man, but the struggle of Woman! 

She was of her day, and in her groping way, she 


MARCH ON 


21 


read a meaning in these present-day manifestations of 
her sex that so distressed and so appalled the Colonel. 
The code for women hitherto was imposed; it was 
not of women’s making. If in the revolt of to-day, 
some of these girls, such as ’Genie, went too far, it 
was because, in their opinion, the tonic quality of honest 
immodesty is preferred to the poison of hypocrisy. 

In her own inarticulate way, Emily sensed this. Be- 
cause she loved Colonel Te, because she could not make 
him see her side of all this, because she never would be 
able to make him see, her eyes as she spoke, filled 
slowly. 

“Colonel Te, dear Colonel Te, I tell you, you’re 
wrong. You and father always, have been wrong. And 
McHenry’s wrong. Your day, and father’s day, were 
cruel to women; and McHenry would keep it so. 
Colonel Te, darling Colonel Te, you make it hard! 
You put me, and not McHenry, in the wrong; you put 
women in the wrong! And father always has!” 

Colonel Tecumseh, patting the hand of Emily as it 
lay on his arm, was incalculably tall, thin, bony, vio- 
lent and lovable ; with a nose so long that it drooped at 
the end as from its own weight. He wore mustaches, 
these being iron-gray, and a bit ragged, and twisted, 
poor things, by a lean hand that never let them be in 
peace. The champion of woman, as he supposed, and 
fiercely and hotly her defender, he never was to see 
that a creed of yesterday, imposed upon to-day, can 
lead to tragic error. And this he was not to see, be- 
cause he was to be protected from a knowledge that 
would come too late, by Emily herself, who through 
him, was its victim. 


CHAPTER III 


W HEN Stephen crossed the room and tapped 
Bennie Harlan on the shoulder, Lucy Wing 
gave the newcomer a swift glance, exhibiting 
signs of pleasure, her eyebrows arching, and her eyes 
smiling recognition. She came alike to the point and 
into his arms, being by nature matter-of-fact. 

“It is Stephen? Warrington Adams said we would 
find you and your mother at home this summer.” 

“As surely as it is Lucy. No one told me that you 
and Mrs. Wing were back. Warrington hasn’t men- 
tioned in any letter that you were coming home.” 

“Grandmother is tired at last. She says she’s made 
wanderers of herself and me long enough, and is come 
to stay.” 

And this was Stephen? Stephen Janvier? Lucy was 
saying this to herself. This big and radiant young 
man in white flannels and a blue coat, whose penchant 
in life would seem to be for one-stepping, so blissful 
his devotion, and so consummate his skill. 

“No break-ins on this, my son,” he was saying to a 
youth who at this moment touched him on the shoulder. 

Warrington Adams, the friend of both, had given 
Lucy an idea altogether different. Warrington dwelt 
not at all upon his friend’s most passionate skill at one- 
stepping; speaking of his amazing eager brain; and of 
this brain’s ravenous and outstanding capacity to ab- 
sorb and retain; telling of feats in mental prowess put 
22 


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23 


over during the college days of the two, by this hot- 
blooded young southerner; and alluding to this young 
man’s quite definite aims, and clearly conceived ambi- 
tions. 

Out of these characteristics as given her from time 
to time by Warrington, Lucy had built a personality. 
Severe nymph with the appraising eyes, she at this 
time of her life was impatient of commonplace people, 
and more than hard upon the average person of her 
day and hour. That Stephen derived an actual hilarity 
from his ragtiming, that the abounding physical pres- 
ence of him breathed gusto and delight, found her a 
trifle outraged, and therefore irritated. 

His hand, it was a big and a dexterous hand, was 
outstretched flat against the girl’s body. Impelling 
her out of the path of a too riotously swaying bac- 
chante and the bacchante’s partner, it touched her bare 
shoulder. 

Not every man or woman can say of himself or 
herself, this or that thing began with me, at this or that 
moment. A shiver ran over Lucy. It left her shaken, 
and it left her stunned. 

What was this happening to her? For the girl was 
cruelly honest with herself, being reared by old Mrs. 
Wing, that fierce modernist, to regard life starkly as 
to facts, and having few illusions, and no self-delusions. 
What was this, the first intimation with her in her 
hitherto sufficient life, that woman may not be 
supremely the mistress of her soul? 

Lucy Wing was a young person of strong character- 
istics, predilections, and biases. She came through one 
line of descent, that of her grandmother, of a dry and 
matter-of-fact stock; through another, the Wings, of a 
proud and melancholy people. Lacking nothing from 


24 


MARCH ON 


any source derived of courage in her make-up, she took 
a full look at Stephen here, glancing up at her com- 
panion, who was carrying her about the room so ab- 
sorbedly, and so well. 

As she examined the big features, she saw that the 
young man’s face suddenly become stern and tense, was 
shot through as by an inner light, and that his eyes 
looking levelly ahead of him from underneath the 
heavy brows were irradiated. And as definitely as 
though this Stephen Janvier had told her in words, 
she gathered that whatever at base was the explanation 
of that wave of shivering emotion that had so stunned 
her, he and she shared in common, the experience. 

A white shaft of fear crossed alike her consciousness 
and her face. Her foot in its satin slipper for the 
moment lost its cunning; and but for the instant re- 
sponse from her companion, she would have stumbled. 
Recovering herself outwardly at least, she found that 
she in this interval had been taken possession of by 
Stephen, who carried her along skillfully and surely. 

Why this confused and profound emotion! This 
sense of strange joy, and inexplicable well-being! Why 
this vivification come upon a commonplace affair filling 
a summer evening ! The girl asking herself these ques- 
tions, struggled against a sense of the increasing ob- 
session. She was no sickly fancied, because inexperi- 
enced, young person, no gauche schoolgirl in the senti- 
mental throes of first youth. 

The music stopped, and her companion brought up 
on the instant, and released her. 

This young man’s grandfather at a corresponding 
age, in the beau monde of his antebellum setting, had 
been a buck of bucks; his father when a young man at 
college, and even after, was disposed to dandyism and 


MARCH ON 


25 


fashion; Stephen at twenty-seven, reflective of his day, 
in the stead of any mode, conveyed the impression of 
excellent and blunt good sense and good humor. He 
might be said to carry his recommendation in his beam- 
ing countenance. He bent this countenance upon Lucy. 

“And now for the porch, shall we? And a homey 
talk, as my aunt would say? Think of the arrears that 
I, defrauded through no fault of mine, surely am to be 
allowed to make up ! And consider my sense of injury 
toward Warrington, who is so far ahead of me!” 

And Stephen still with his gaze on her, swept her 
with something wonderful in the way of smiles. 

She smiled herself at this, going with his mood a 
little way. A friendliness was upon her, a pleasing 
ease and naturalness were with her. She of the often- 
times too rigid carriage of the spirit was penetrated 
with a sense of imminent adventuring; and also she 
was profoundly and astonishingly happy. She had yet 
to suspect, and suspecting, arm herself to meet the 
astuteness with which this Stephen, through insight and 
understanding of his fellow creatures, won them to his 
wishes. She had yet to learn that this young man, who 
here was speaking again, had a way! 

“How about the porch? Shall we?” 

“I try to do my duty when I’m made to see it.” 

He stole at her a newly-appraising glance, her face 
with its every contour, and its every feature, gathered 
up in his consciousness; the hair dressed with an art and 
a sophisticated skill; the fine line of the brows; the dis- 
comforting thin proud nose. A shadowy humor trem- 
bled at the comer of her mouth, a connection, though 
far removed, of the house of laughter. 

That something then of grace and variety was in 
her, which makes women agreeable. She had received 


26 


MARCH ON 


from heaven a ready and an ingenious spirit. And 
Stephen had suspected her of an intellect only ! 

Warrington Adams was to blame for this. War- 
rington in speaking of her, stressed cleverness, leading 
Stephen to see her the center as it were of a mental 
nimbus, the high-brow offspring of her lively-witted 
and caustic old grandmother. 

That Warrington in the scheme of things, in this 
earthly Eden for souls, called life, should stress brains ! 
Stephen yet would show him those things in the human 
experience that incalculably are greater ! 

The two, the upstanding young man, and the girl in 
the modish dress of white taffeta, were standing before 
a long window of the room. The wire screens were 
unlatched, and like the casements, were stretched wide. 
On the porch beyond, couples already retreated, were 
strolling. 

Stephen took Lucy’s hand. She was no novice. She 
was beautiful at sixteen, and men being men the world 
over in their susceptibility to that in woman which 
pleases the eye, she learned early how to take care of 
herself. But now as this young man took her hand 
to lead her across the level sill, her heart raced fast, 
and she rejoiced in it. 

This she told herself, was wrong. And saying so, 
found herself dwelling the rather upon the fact, and 
this with the astonishment of discovery, that joy is such 
a beautiful and such a tempting thing! 

Led thus by Stephen, she stepped out upon the porch, 
to be met by such a splendor of moonlight as she had 
seldom seen, going across the wide floor with her com- 
panion to the railing. 

This baluster was of iron, and was old, like the 
house. Standing here at the rail beside Stephen, again 


MARCH ON 


27 


the girl was strongly agitated. Why this renewed swift 
racing of her heart? Why this unfamiliar languor 
creeping upon her senses? 

The dozen orange-hued paper lanterns, strung over- 
head between the pillars of the veranda, swayed in the 
night wind. And a rose vine which climbed the railing, 
over-wooded as this climber was, and in need of the 
pruner’s hand, starred the night with here and there 
a vigorous-stemmed blossom, pallid in the glow of a 
swaying paper globe. 

In actual fact these roses were yellow with, at the 
moment of their opening, quite passionate salmon cen- 
ters. Stephen, who was a definite person, had brought 
Lucy to this exact point along the railing, because she 
was Mrs. Wing’s granddaughter, and because he in 
this connection had a use by and by for one of these 
blossoms. 

A lawn of wide acreage, and of open spaces, 
stretched in front of the house. It was inundated with 
radiance, the near and far masses of the trees and 
shrubberies, and the distant line of the defining hedge, 
black upon it. 

The cheep of an insect in the grass ten feet below 
the railing came up to the porch. Here at hand a 
huge beetle, revealed by the lantern glow, blundered 
heavily to and fro. A small, dusky body, shapely and 
elegant, seen clean-cut and compact against the sky, 
poised rigid upon the exact tip of a spruce tree to the 
right of the driveway that swept in front of the house, 
a creature smaller than a big man’s hand; and with no 
warning, the mocking bird outpoured the enchantment 
of ecstatic song into the silver cup of the night. 

And this night upon which these two gazed! 
Stephen knew no more shame at stark and honest ex- 


28 


MARCH ON 


pression, than did those Elizabethans whom he best 
understood of the poets, dead and living; the night, 
so he told himself, like the girl at whom he here stole 
another look, had the face of Juliet, calling to love 
and passion. 

And the moon which high overhead outpoured a 
silent flood of splendor from heaven to earth ! Stephen 
again with a glance at the girl beside him, admitted it; 
the moon to which the cleanly-cut features of Lucy now 
were lifted, had the face of her for whom Endymion 
sighed but did not attain, Diana, lovely, remote, and 
coldly serene. 

Stephen had definite business. “Tell me, Lucy, how 
is your grandmother?” 

“Grandmother had a birthday, her eighty-eighth, 
two weeks ago, the day after we arrived at home. She 
celebrated it by writing a communication to one of the 
local newspapers. It was double-barreled, and proba- 
bly the sharper put, because due to her absence, its 
columns so long had been rid of her. She attacked her 
old friend, the editor, on two issues, the continued 
stand of his paper against suffrage for us women, and 
its policy of intervention in Mexico by the United 
States. I may say that grandmother is very well.” 

“An amazing person.” Stephen’s tones were per- 
haps too musing and reflective. “Warrington Adams 
chuckles over the caustic penetration of her when she 
is moved to retrospect. Would you say, now, that she 
is as apt at foresight?” 

“That depends.” 

Lucy was looking at her companion. There was 
more then to this young man than appeared? Else 
why this sense with her of pitfalls, cautioning her to 
move warily? 


MARCH ON 


29 


“The last time I talked with Mrs. Wing is six years 
ago. I was calling with my mother, and on that occa- 
sion, and for a moment only, saw you.” 

Lucy nodded. She remembered him; a sophomoric 
young gentleman with a superabundance of manner, 
and rosy about the gills. It was with her that she, the 
schoolgirl, jealous of her years and her prerogatives, 
had resented the manner. 

“Your grandmother gave me a hand in welcome, 
looking me over with shrewd eyes. Something of a 
gaze, that of Mrs. Wing, wouldn’t you say?” 

“Grandmother has a reputation of long standing 
for successfully seeing through people.” 

“I’m glad, more glad than I’m willing right now to 
say, that you feel so. This is what Mrs. Wing, on 
that occasion, said to me : 

“ ‘Heart-whole thus far, I see, young man. For a 
Janvier you’re slow falling for the great madness we 
call love. There are two varieties with you Janviers, 
and I know both types. You being of the pattern I 
may claim to know best, when the great moment comes 
for you, it will be the cataclysm.’ ” 

Stephen had squared about, and here looked full at 
Lucy. His voice was uncertain as from a suddenly 
constricted throat, but this disqualification did not keep 
out of it an exultant note as of sheer joy. 

She looked back at him, gaze for gaze, as straight 
and full as he. Warrington, her friend, and there 
were few whom she sooner would trust, was the guar- 
antor for the quality of this young man. 

He met the look. The light above their heads 
brought out for Lucy her companion’s figure and face; 
an alert figure; an alive face; eyes a bit far-set. 

Beneath the gaze of these eyes meeting and holding 


30 


MARCH ON 


hers, she felt her own dilating. A second, and she was 
free. Her heart beat violently. 

Lucy, the child of perpetual long wanderings, this 
young globe-trotter with already behind her a variety 
of stabilizing experience, struggled to be matter-of- 
fact ; thinking to treat the moment with an off-handed- 
ness calculated to be salutary, and withal dryly. 

“And I am expected to do what? Confess myself 
interested in my grandmother’s prognostications?” 

“God bless you, yes.” Stephen’s joy was superb, 
and his face irradiated. He took a step toward her, 
with both hands out. 

Unprepared for so dynamic a response, Lucy re- 
treated, and stood still, finding herself caught and held 
by rose briers which threatened not alone her arms and 
shoulders, but — and she was a practical young person — 
her gown ! 

She looked at the young man helplessly; she wanted 
to laugh; she wanted to frown; she wanted to tell him 
what she thought of him. 

He came to her aid humbly. Having set her free, 
releasing her dress thorn by thorn, he turned to the 
source of the secondary offending, the rose vine. And 
still with his air of humble doggedness, he searched 
for, and finally settled upon a blossom, selecting one 
marked with such vigor and perfection as the offering 
presented. Whatever there was of assumed exagger- 
ation in his manner, the girl saw that the otherwise 
competent hands of this astounding young man were 
trembling. 

Having chosen his rose and broken it from the 
parent stem, he laid it on a porch table at hand. 

“I won’t trespass further on your kindness now. 
By and by, when you’re leaving, if I bring my flower to 


MARCH ON 


3i 


your car, perhaps you’ll act as emissary for me?” 

“Emissary?” She found herself taking the cue from 
him, the aggressor and offender, the should-be repent- 
ant and apologist. 

“The rose is for your grandmother, if you will give 
it to her, as coming from me. Mentioning also, if 
you will be so kind, that the stock from which I broke 
it, rooted so long ago in the soil of the Janviers, still 
flourishes. Oh — ,” and this was spoken cheerfully, 
as though the speaker become briskly spirited again, 
had recovered his aplomb, “you can leave it to Mrs. 
Wing to understand. Saying if you will, that with her 
permission, Stephen Janvier will be over to call on her 
to-morrow afternoon, and confess to the cataclysm she 
predicted.” 

sfc jfs j}: :fc ifc sjs 

Three times Bennie Harlan came out on the porch 
looking for Lucy, all but herself and Stephen having 
long gone in. And three times he, after standing afar 
off indeterminate on his tall young legs, turned back. 

He had come from Ashe this evening with Lucy in 
her car. And being every inch of him, a manly and 
cheerful-hearted stripling, the blood running so bound- 
ingly in his veins, passed on to him by always decent 
gentlemen and gentlewomen, he reckoned it his part 
to keep an eye on Lucy’s needs, and himself ready for 
her convenience. 

The fourth time, seeing the pair coming forward 
along the porch toward the doorway, he went to meet 
them. 


CHAPTER IV 


UCY, on coming into the house, declared her in- 



tention of joining her old friend, Colonel 


J — * Tecumseh Craig, where he sat in the hall, fav- 
ored with a small table for his greater comfort, discuss- 
ing his supper. 

He arose as she came toward him, amazing tall in 
his loose clothes. Having fetched a second chair, and 
seated her, he resumed his place, his face with its in- 
credible length of nose, bent toward her with defer- 
ence and solicitude. 

Beloved of the clubs, vociferously welcomed at the 
card tables, both poker and bridge, known at every 
private home of consequence in town, and also at every 
cafe bar, and by every taxi-driver and cabman, Colonel 
Tecumseh was understood in a moment of expansion to 
have asserted to a group of fellow clubmen that he 
never had been really drunk in his life, but that in his 
recollection, neither had he ever been entirely sober. 

An excellent mixer, sought after as a dinner-table 
guest by hostesses old and young, he was a person of 
birth and breeding. A cavalry officer in the Confeder- 
ate army at twenty-one; a colonel at twenty-four, for 
forty-nine years he had been returned by his friends 
and upholders within his party to the legislature at 
Frankfort. There as in every other relation in life, he 
was ever a storm center, inviting and returning alike 
heated and bitter invective on all and any subject, re- 


32 


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33 


gardless of its triviality, or its importance. As lovable 
as belligerent, confusing prejudice with principle, al- 
ways and fiercely the gentleman according to his under- 
standing of the term, he in his city, and his state was 
among the last of his kind and his day. 

With the serving of Isaac’s buffet supper, he had 
sunk from a state of expectancy mildly hopeful to one of 
melancholy and dejection. To his mind, a salad, a sand- 
wich, and a cup of coffee, followed by an ice, the modern 
substitution for a supper, as refreshment for the human 
body, is meager. Colonel Tecumseh was a deeply con- 
cerned and a constant good liver, and as the evening 
rounded to midnight, loved, say, a lobster, followed by, 
say again, a sweetbread with mushrooms, savory and 
velvet-smooth in a chafing dish above its blue flame, 
together with a glass of something to grace the 
discussing. 

In his day the guests at an evening entertainment sat 
down seriously to a matter of supper, seeing before 
them three sizes at least in wineglasses, and one of 
these for champagne; the palate prepared to start in 
with relishes and oysters, and by way of old ham and 
jellied chicken with embellishments, succeeded by a 
pate, emerge to a choice in a syllabub, a wine jelly, or 
a nesselrode. 

Welcoming the distraction from his dissatisfaction, 
in the person of this dark-eyed and lovely grand- 
daughter of Mrs. Wing, his faded blue eyes gazed upon 
her with evident and genuine pleasure. 

He had seen her since her recent return, having been 
out to Ashe by invitation to welcome his old friend, 
her grandmother, and to dine. 

There was directness in the question that Lucy here 
put to him. “Colonel Te, is there anything that con- 


34 


MARCH ON 


nects grandmother with the Janviers? Anything in 
such a connection about, say, a rose, in bloom right now 
on the railing of the porch?” 

The Colonel’s lean fingers strayed to his mustaches. 
Beauty, young and glowing, beauty hanging as now, 
on the awaited word, inevitably will stir the male heart, 
whether at seven, seventeen, or seventy. Colonel Te- 
cumseh rated the annals of times gone by as heritages, 
entrusted to survivors here and there such as himself, 
to be redistributed to the young people of to-day, the 
heirs. An opportunity such as this offering, in ordi- 
nary would have delighted him. That he should be 
deterred through any scruple was for him indeed un- 
fortunate. 

Modern youth is less ingenuous than its elders. 
“There is such a connection then, Colonel Te?” 

Colonel Craig cleared his voice, threw forward his 
chest, let his dubious eyes wander about the hallway, 
and back to his attentive and charming vis-a-vis; hesi- 
tated; and like his forbear, Adam, before him, fell. 
In his defense let it be said that he did not recognize 
his friend, Mrs. Lucy Wing, and this to her face as 
often as otherwise, as in any particular whatever re- 
flective of his or her day’s code; accounting her as one 
to whose every attitude in life, and every opinion, he 
had been, was, and would continue to be, opposed! 

“There is such a connection, my dear.” 

“And of what nature?” 

“A connection that in its day stood for a more than 
lively rumpus in this community.” 

“Go on, Colonel Te.” 

“On the whole, I think I will, my dear.” 

The brown fingers of the indeterminate Colonel 
teased the mustaches, stroking them as ferociously as 


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35 


if they and not that doughty octogenarian, Mrs. Wing, 
were the cause of his perturbation. 

“Said I to your grandmother the other night at Ashe, 
‘I’ll tell Lucy myself, by the old Harry, I will, if as 
you say you mean to do, you send her over to this dance 
at the Janviers, virtually self-invited.’ ‘Tell her, by 
your ancient Harry, and then go to him,’ said she to 
me. ‘By gad, and I will,’ said I.” 

Lucy nodded. “Grandmother told me as I started 
to-night, that you, if here, would have some dug-up, 
old-man tale, as she impolitely put it, to tell me. She 
said I was to give you her permission, and say that 
she’ll regard it as a kindness, saving her the energy.” 

“She told you to say this to me?” 

“Just this, Colonel Te.” 

“I thought to force her hand, and like her impu- 
dence, she’s forced mine. But I’ll do it.” 

Yet again he refrained, pushing away with his cof- 
fee cup, what he called the cold insult to an intelligent 
stomach, an iced salad at midnight. If old Lucy Wing 
desired him to tell Lucy this story, it was for purposes 
of her own, purposes that he on principle distrusted, 
and, by gad, he’d not do it ! 

But he did. 

“Go on, dear Colonel Te.” 

Not for the price of his immortal soul, would Colonel 
Tecumseh smoke in the presence of ladies. In the ab- 
sence of this resource and solace, he reached out, 
picked up, and played with his coffee spoon. 

“The minds of the old, my dear, delight in their own 
perspicacities. No doubt, desire , that greatest of ro- 
mancers, contributes much of what we in our memories, 
like to believe, is tradition. When I was a little lad, 
and your grandmother was a young woman of parts, 


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many of our elders were given to a passion for rose 
culture, having the out-door tastes characteristic at that 
time with every southern gentleman and gentlewoman. 
My own mother was of these, and Stephen Janvier, 
pere , as he was called to distinguish him in the family 
group, was another. He hangs yonder in the library, a 
scarlet-jowled person in a high stock, wearing a beaver 
hat. 

“Florists as we know these to-day, and nurseries 
filled with every want and need of the purchaser, then 
were unknown in Kentucky. And the rose lovers of 
the state, from Lexington and Frankfort, to Louisville, 
exchanged cuttings as well as experience; experimenting 
as they were, for varieties.” 

Colonel Tecumseh straightened, sitting tall and spare 
across from Lucy, with her bare white shoulders, and 
her raven hair. 

“My mother, as I said, was such a rose fancier, and 
I to the day I lost her at past fifty, was her devoted 
and not unskilled assistant. I have it in my mind that 
most of the hardy roses in the gardens of our locality at 
that time came from stock ordered from overseas by 
the Janvier family, who lived then as now at this place; 
and I know that our best native roses of this section to 
this day, have Bourbon and Provence strains.” 

“And where does grandmother come into this, 
Colonel Te?” 

“We are getting to it. I was a boy, as I said, when 
these things occurred that I tell. This Stephen Janvier, 
pere, the really supreme rose faddist of the region, 
experimenting with a native wild stock, a climber known 
as the prairie rose, crossed with a French standard, 
produced an amazing, vigorous pillar rose, its foliage 
lustrous and dark-green, the flowers pinkish-yellow, 


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37 


their centers tinged with salmon, a free bloomer, my 
dear, and fragrant.” 

Colonel Te was lost apparently in an inner ecstasy 
at recall of this paragon of blooms. Coming back to 
the present, he tweaked his nose. 

“Young and old, in that day we were romantic, Lucy, 
and not ashamed to be. This rose was named by 
Stephen Janvier, pere, the Lucy Routt , in honor of the 
young lady to whom the hand of his only son was 
pledged. 

“The new rose sprang into amazing popularity and 
fame, like the young woman whose name it bore, and 
who herself was known far and wide, from New 
Orleans to White Sulphur, from Washington to Sara- 
toga. Age and youth and fashion, wherever she had 
friends, took it up. Gentlemen wore it, a single bud, 
in their lapels. Ladies fastened it, a single blossom, 
in their hair. Poems in its honor appeared in the 
Ladies 9 Annuals , as well as in the columns of our local 
papers, The Louisville Journal and The Daily Demo- 
crat. One such poem bore the initials, G. D. P. ; 
George D. Prentice, the great editor; another A. W.; 
Amelia Welby, the Kentucky poetess; a third, G. K. ; 
Georgiana Keats, the young and beautiful daughter of 
George Keats, of our own local group, and the niece 
of John Keats, the supreme poet of beauty, I say it, 
of all time !” 

“And then, Colonel Te?” 

“Lucy Routt married, not the son of choleric Stephen 
Janvier, but John Wing. Married him offhand, over- 
night, you might say.” 

The Colonel straightened again, and again tweaked 
his nose. “It seems but yesterday, as I tell it. The 
Janvier interests and political sympathies were identi- 


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fied with The Daily Democrat , and they as well, were 
supposed to be the backers of this paper financially. 
The political fortunes of the Routts, the father and 
son both were in public life, were identified with The 
Louisville Journal. It was a day of politics, big issues 
were afoot, and feeling ran high. 

“Every young man of standing whatever, belonged 
to the State militia. War was threatening, and these 
young men were drilling by day and by night. There 
is, or was, a term in military parlance, ( Get The Route / 
the equivalent of saying that one has received his 
marching orders. You of to-day, my dear, say r-o-u-t-e. 
Well, we didn’t, we said rout! } 

“Yes, Colonel Te?” 

“Following the marriage of Lucy Routt with John 
Wing, there appeared in The Journal , what the friends 
of the Janviers, and The Democrat, called a scurrilous 
and offensive verse. Its lines suggesting that in keep- 
ing with the recent flouting of a young gentleman in 
local high life, the name of a certain rose of popu- 
larity, be changed from the L — R — , to the ' Get-The - 
Route * 

“And these lines, my dear, were the start of exceed- 
ing feeling for time to come between the friends of the 
parties concerned; and were the occasion as well, of 
long-continued and acrimonious interchange between 
the two newspapers, editorially and through con- 
tributors.” 

“And after that, Colonel Te?” 

“The Janviers, Lucy, are good losers; are first-class 
sporting stock. Here and there in the county to-day, 
in old farmhouse yards, and beside old doorsteps, you 
will come on a climbing yellow-rose that the farmer’s 


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39 


old mother, or grandmother, will tell you is the Get- 
The-Route. And such a rose, as you seem to be aware, 
slipped from time to time from older stock, still dis- 
ports itself on the Janvier’s porch railing.” 

****** 

The guests of the evening all were gone, but Helen 
Janvier and Stephen. The son, having helped his 
mother into her wrap, a combination of transparent 
chiffon and fur edging that stood to the male mind 
for paradox, faced about, and made an announcement 
to the family group. 

The group were in the hall, the senior host politely 
but visibly impatient at the hour. Anne was snuffing 
out candles in a wall bracket. Evelyn, having lighted a 
cigarette taken from a gold case, had thrown herself 
prone on a sofa, a piece of old mahogany that stood 
against the wall. Good-looking in a clear-eyed, fresh- 
skinned way, she was a Kentucky girl brought back by 
Charlie from the east a bit against her will, her parents 
having sought that larger field for social and financial 
glory. Charlie, black-haired and blue-eyed, good- 
natured and well-bred, the best type of the sporting, 
and at the same time astute young business man, sagged 
on the arm of the sofa beside her. 

Stephen (breaking in on this group with his news ). — 
I’m going to marry Lucy Wing, or it’s up with me. 
Don’t everybody speak at once, please. 

Charlie. — Well! (his lips shaped themselves to a 
whistle that never came). 

Evelyn ( turning her head on the stiff roll pillow of her 
sofa far enough to glance at Stephen). — This is so 
sudden, George, dear. 


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Anne Janvier (leaving her candles , gathering up her 
scarf from a chair > and joining the group). — Stevie 
does have a way of taking it out of us sober people, 
doesn’t he? 

Mr. Janvier (with bland impersonality). — A hand- 
some girl. Didn’t some one mention that Mrs. Wing 
called up the other day, announcing her return, and 
saying she’d like to send the girl over to-night? The 
Routts never were strong on looks ; the grandmother, 
of course, was a Routt; but the Wings, men and 
women, from way back, have been good-lookers. 

Charlie. — As well as high-steppers 

Stephen (beaming on the group). — I thought you’d 
feel it impossible to permit a lady with so much of 
charm, as well as background, to be lost to the fam- 
ily; ripping, isn’t it? 

Helen (having adjusted her wrap by now to her lik- 
ing). — If I thought you were being merely flippant, 
my son 

Stephen ( catching her hand and carrying it to his 
lips). — Thanks for the doubt. 

Evelyn. — S’long, Stevie; you’d better get on home. 
We want to talk you over after you’ve gone. 

Stephen (speaking musingly). — Whatever has an air 
of sustained or thoughtful interchange is disturbing 
to Evelyn ; continuity, in her opinion, is to be avoided, 
as savoring of recourse to the brain. 

Evelyn (retorting) . — It’s not enough for woman to be 
beautiful, or even virtuous. According to our day 
we must please. 

Mr. Janvier (irrelevantly) . — There’s a feeling of not 
unnatural self-consciousness on the part of a Janvier, 
even after all these years, at the thought of such a 
connection as you, Stevie, suggest. 


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4i 


Stephen. — Go on. There’ll never be a better time to 
say it out. 

Anne. — I’d prefer you’d go home, and let us get to 
bed. 

Mr. Janvier ( crossing the hall to a table , and laying 
the butt of his cigar on a tray). — No one has a 
keener admiration for Mrs. Wing’s amazing quali- 
ties than I have, my dear boy. If only dating this 
a dozen years back, when she in need of a gardener, 
took ours of thirty-odd years’ service from us. 
Our firm, too, has had business with her in my time, 
and I personally can testify to her shrewdness in 
the conduct of her own interests. (He paused here, 
as if gathering up his next statement with care.) 
Mrs. Wing, in her way, is the keenest woman, young 
or old, I’ve ever known, if not the most scrupulous 
in gaining her ends. She always has been one for 
seeing, knowing, and doing. She loves a sense of 
her power. In her day she has meddled in a great 
many things, seemingly possessed with a genius for 
interference and action. She would have been a 
noted figure in some eighteenth century, petty sov- 
ereign’s court politics. 

Evelyn. — S tevie wouldn’t go home when he could. 

Mr. Janvier (passing over the interruption) . — Mrs. 
Wing, young woman as she was at the time of her 
marriage, was a match for any member of the Wing 
family she went into. And God knows there was 
blood wild enough in that group. Few women can 
defy convention and society as she did in the years 
following her marriage, and also rule it. To dis- 
regard reputation is a tight-rope performance, but 
she managed it. We of my day grew up on the 
stories still current of her. What did she not do in 


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those earlier married years? What mad act then, 
or later, did her capricious will ever deny itself! 
All her life she has been violent in her stands. In 
the Civil War she was a Unionist; she had been 
raised a Whig; and she never lived with John Wing, 
her husband, one hour after he put on the Confed- 
erate gray. She was then near forty, and the mother 
of a grown son. After the war, her husband let her 
have what she wanted, which was the country place 
at Ashe, and he lived with his coterie of old servants 
in the town house. Mrs. Wing in her old age being 
as she is, shrewd, caustic, and more than cold and 
dry at bottom, I can’t fancy that a young girl raised 
by her, will have retained many illusions. 

* * * * * * 

The two last guests finally were gone. Evelyn still 
prone on her back, her face to the ceiling, smoking her 
third cigarette, asked a question. 

“Is Stephen ever in earnest? About anything?” 

Her husband stooping and lightly kissing her ear, 
cross-fired. 

“Are you?” 

****** 

At this same moment Stephen himself was answering 
this question. His roadster was speeding under his 
hand along the quarter of a mile that lay between the 
gate of the Janvier homestead and the modern house 
built on a corner of the original place, and belonging 
to his mother and himself. 

The rough, good smell of the damp wayside weeds 
reached the two in the car. The moon was gone, and 
the stars overhead shone brightly. 

“Warm enough, Mummy? It’s chill.” 

“Quite warm.” 


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43 


“I mean what I said back yonder to the family. 
It’s real, Mummy.” 

“Yes, my son.” 

****** 

Fifteen minutes later, Helen, as she prepared for 
bed in her room of cheerful chintzes and modem furni- 
ture, heard her son as he moved about his bedroom 
across the hall, singing with softly modulated fervor. 

He sang more happily than well, but under two 
varieties of stress when alone in his room, unfailingly 
sang. The one was when he was perturbed, the other 
when he was content. A person familiar with these 
two manifestations never confused them. 

Helen, brushing her fair hair, smiled as these sounds 
of portent reached her. Born with the body and soul 
to be the mother of many, she in her silent way lavished 
her maternity upon this one. As she read him, alert, 
exercising inflexibly his heaven-bestowed privilege to 
be happy and to enjoy, quick in his instinct as to right 
and wrong, sweet-tempered and generous-hearted, the 
temperament of this son of hers was his best friend; 
he being the possessor of that blessing given to the few, 
joy of the spirit. 

****** 

As for this Stephen moving about his bedroom, this 
young man of fervor and directness, by whom the suc- 
cessive manifestations of life were welcomed with an 
ardor and an intoxication whereof colder temperaments 
are incapable, he was saying to himself, that much, 
much may happen in a moment of time. God said, Let 
there be light, and there was light. And again saying, 
It is not good for man to be alone, made He woman ! 

Recalling his exultant rush across the room to Lucy 
this evening, he swore he didn’t know how he got to 


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her. Telling himself that a man when he feels the 
impact of the universe, or in other words goes for- 
ward to meet for the first time the woman he loves, is 
to be forgiven if he reels. Affirming that his soul had 
risen up, and as some rapt and flaming seraph voicing 
his sanctus, was chanting as he strode across the floor, 
“She or none, the wife at your hearthstone, and the 
mother of your children !” 

We move on some defenses through patient sapping 
and gradual undermining, so he told himself; others 
we take by assault, accounting as an asset, the element 
of surprise; instinct making clear to him in the 
instant of seeing Lucy, which method he meant to 
pursue. 

His arm placed about her to-night, nevertheless, up- 
held her with superlative nicety, guiding her with ex- 
quisite restraint. So fixed within his mind from the 
initial moment of beholding her, was the sanctity of 
this girl’s person that, as he carried her swiftly and 
surely about the room, he was reiterating with rapture 
to himself, “Lest my jewel I should tyne l” 

Moving from table to bureau, from bureau to ward- 
robe, getting out of his coat, taking off his collar, he 
was filled with an ineffable happiness. Life was sweet 
to him, was welcome; nature, and man’s partici- 
pation in nature, were good. His mind ran so far 
ahead of the moment that Lucy was his, and he was 
hers; a thing de facto; accomplished; and so far as he 
was party to it, fixed; as inevitable as that day shall 
follow night; as immutable and enduring as eternity is 
long. 

He was an egoist, yes! Every Janvier was this. 
Creatures with such a passionate sense of being, they 
see all in life as from a center. And a thing once be- 


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45 


come dear to such an one, in the same moment of this 
investiture, becomes with him set apart; separated even 
in the thought itself from the common secular usages; 
inviolate ; and dedicated to homage and worship. 

* * * * * * 

Twelve miles across country, Lucy Wing stood in the 
center of her bedroom. It was an old-fashioned room, 
huge and square, with moldings, and doors set between 
half pilasters in white, square, wide-silled windows 
above white wainscoting, and mahogany furniture more 
ponderous than distinguished. 

She had made no move toward undressing other than 
to let her white cloak slip from her bare shoulders onto 
a chair. The slightly severe modeling of her young 
features gave a look of gravity to her face at all times, 
this severity now being shot through with terror. 

An excessive rectitude of mind characterized her. 
She never willingly dissembled. She saw that the 
world, which to her hitherto unawakened senses was a 
sexless Eden, to her was sexless no more. 

She sank down in a piteous heap upon the floor with 
her face buried against the seat of a chair. Perhaps 
never before in her life had she occupied an attitude 
of abasement such as this. These tides, flowing and 
breaking in waves upon her, were like shame which 
scorches and blights. 

Love comes differently to different people. To 
Stephen it was a happiness and a delight, an exaltation 
that uplifts and glorifies. To Lucy it was the inquisi- 
tion and the rack; it was anguish and shrinking, and 
hideous dismay. That such a conflict could arise be- 
tween a human creature’s intentions, and nature’s mean- 
ings, came upon her with a crushing, a down-piling 
force. 


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Most gladly would she have escaped. Warrington 
Adams had told her many things about Stephen Jan- 
vier. But he had not told her that she, hardly waiting 
for him to knock at the door of her heart, would find 
herself faint with conscious love for him. 


CHAPTER V 


T HE country place of Mrs. Wing and her grand- 
daughter was on the outskirts of Ashe, a town- 
ship twelve miles across country from the homes 
of the two Janvier families. 

This township was made up of ‘half-a-dozen extensive 
old places, survivals these, kept up according to the cir- 
cumstances of the present owners; twice as many mod- 
ern homes; a school, two churches, a store, the post- 
office, and the railroad and the trolley stations. 

The following afternoon Stephen Janvier slowed his 
car as he entered the sleepy village. The avenue into 
which he turned at the post-office corner was very 
peaceful. Black ash trees met overhead, the gravel 
sidewalks were worn and a bit weedy, shrubs and trees 
hung over the fence-lines and the hedges, and the air 
was sweet with the scents of grass newly cut, locust 
blooms, and honeysuckle. 

At a gateway of double iron gates and worn brick 
posts, he stopped his car. Facing the gates across the 
road was the parsonage, the home of Dr. and Mrs. 
Harlan, and their son, Bennie, of the high legs; a dwell- 
ing in a yard well above the road, and reached by stone 
steps set in a bank overgrown with honeysuckle. Ad- 
joining the dwelling was the church, the two alike man- 
tled with Virginia creeper, the newly unfolded leaves 
tenderly and freshly green. Beech trees with their 
trunks hoary and gray, and their far-flung branches 
47 


48 


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Idvel in their spread, gave a sense of forest stillness 
and aloofness to both church and dwelling. 

Stephen opened the double gates. He remembered 
coming here when he was eleven years old, but never 
since. It was the year of the Cuban war and he, a lad, 
was with his father who held a first-lieutenant’s com- 
mission in the State guard, and was to leave the next 
day to join his organization in Tampa, Florida. 

As Stephen recalled it, his father was come to offer 
his services to the old, and the young, Mrs. Wing, the 
grandmother, and the wife, of Captain John Henry 
Wing, who already was in camp at Tampa; with the 
idea that the ladies might have commissions or mes- 
sages, for their absent soldier. 

Stephen would say this visit paid sixteen years ago 
took place earlier in the season; that it was no leafy 
June, as to-day. He remembered a magnolia tree 
to the side of a brick house, broad and low-browed, 
that announced Spring by its pink and white blossoms 
on' branches black and leafless. 

He got back into his car and followed the drive- 
way, a ribbon of macadam road that, as it wound about 
the undulations of a rolling woodland, crossed a bridge 
above a fairly respectable stream, then made its way 
towards a line of osage hedge. 

****** 

The car came to a stop before the steps of the low- 
browed house of Stephen’s recall, and he sprang out. 
Some pigeons that strutted the driveway, went up in 
the air, whirling and whirling as they ascended. The 
sweet wing whir-r-r as they circled, came back to 
him. He stood where he was, and gazed about him. 

A lawn mower pushed by a Negro man came toward 
him, a blur of grass cuttings spinning in the air above 


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49 


the machine. The man, who was elderly, was tall, with 
eagle features. He was in shirt sleeves and blue jeans 
pantaloons, and wore a broken straw hat. In Stephen’s 
mind was a consciousness that he ought to know him. 

A robin hopped on the lawn; two robins; three; 
sleek fellows, rotund and big-breasted, and undisturbed 
by guest, Negro man, or lawn mower. From the direc- 
tion of some shrubberies, syringas and lilacs, with a 
foreground of peonies, came the bell-like note of a 
thrush on the stillness of the afternoon. 

Stephen turned. To the right of the house was the 
magnolia, a tree with shining foliage, a branch crowd- 
ing a corner of the porch. He went up the steps to 
the porch, which extended across the front of the 
house. A voice came through a screened window, a 
voice which if old, was decided. 

“Is that Stephen Janvier? If it is, open the screen 
door, and find your way here to the sitting room. It’s 
to the left of the hall. The servants, I haven’t a doubt, 
are napping.” 

Stephen as he went in, was smiling. It pleased him 
mightily that Mrs. Wing, as he knew the speaker to be, 
should be thus in character. 

The hall was broad and high, and divided the house 
from front to back. The door at the rear was stretched 
wide, and afforded a far view of country. 

He was recalling certain things. Here on the wall 
was old John Henry Wing, the Indian fighter, an 
atrocious portrait in oils, painted probably long after 
the original was dead. On that former visit, Stephen, 
aged eleven, had stolen from the side of his father 
in the parlor, to return to the hall, and gaze with fas- 
cinated eyes on the villainously executed canvas. 

The founder of the Wing family in Kentucky, lean 


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and grim-faced, and seated on a log which for its back- 
ground had a stockade fence, was in gay-fringed hunt- 
ing shirt, with shot-bags and powderhorn hanging from 
his belt, coarse woolen leggings and moccasins; armed 
with flint-lock, tomahawk, and — fie, fie, John Henry — 
scalping knife ! 

On the opposite wall hung another portrait. The 
subject of this canvas, portly and imposing, in a black 
gown with bands, Stephen took to be Robertson Wing, 
in his day the preeminent Presbyterian divine, by reason 
of his piety, notoriously the exception in the Wing 
family. 

Stephen turned to the door on the left, entered and 
found himself in a pleasantly shabby room, big and 
square, and set about with big and square mahogany 
furniture, and in the presence of that lively and con- 
tumacious octogenarian, Mrs. Lucy Wing, nee Routt. 

She was by a window that commanded a view of the 
porch, installed in a chair with arms, with a footstool 
beneath her feet. 

An amazing wee creature she, in her rusty black, with 
a cap of net and ribbons slipped rakishly to one side of 
her head. It is a question if she weighed eighty pounds, 
yet the spirit which dwelt in thijs withered body, and that 
looked from the quick-darting eyes, was indomitable 
and enduring. 

“It’s you, is it, Stephen Janvier?” 

“Stephen it is, Mrs. Wing, and happy that you’ve 
not forgotten him.” 

He laughed beneath her scrutiny, then took the hand 
that she, following her survey of him, person and fea- 
tures, extended. He was eminently at his ease, and 
tremendously delighted with her. 


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5i 


Mrs. Wing laughed here herself. Hers was a 
wicked mirth. Her nose came down like the letter V 
upon her pursed lips, worldly lips, and sardonic, if 
expression tells anything. Her eyes, far-set in their 
sunken sockets beneath straggling eyebrows, were 
beady-bright for all of this, and full of malice. A cane 
of highly polished wood with a gold knob for its head, 
rested against the arm of her chair. Every now and 
again, as Stephen was to find, she tapped on the floor 
with this cane for emphasis. 

Many things were known to Stephen about this old 
woman. Her father was the American minister to two 
European courts in turn. Her brother was the attor- 
ney-general in two cabinets. She in her eighty-eight 
years had known many people of many lands; ambas- 
sadors, statesmen and diplomats, presidents and 
princes, beribboned and bemedaled men of rank in 
armies and navies. It was pointed out by those who 
did not love Mrs. Wing, that among her far-flung 
friendships, she numbered few ecclesiastics, few if any 
savants, and no nonentities. As Stephen had heard said 
of her, hers was a penchant for the tangible energies 
and actions. 

Bringing her malicious laugh to a stop, she completed 
it with an ejaculation. 

“ ’Umph !” 

There was bite in the syllable as uttered, but no en- 
lightenment. 

A footfall sounded behind Stephen, and Mrs. Wing 
flung a remark over his intervening head. 

“Don’t go, Kitty, don't go y I say. Here’s a visitor 
you’ll be glad to see, if no one else is.” 

Stephen had wheeled. 


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“You know Miss Kitty McKane, Stephen? She 
made your pantie-waists-and-petticoats before you were 
out of dresses.” 

Stephen knew Miss Kitty. Who in the community 
did not, either city or its environs? A seamstress first, 
then, the forewoman at the dressmaking establishment 
of Madame Leroy, and later herself the proprietor of 
the establishment, the friends and patrons of Miss Mc- 
Kane in her successive upward steps included the 
Janvier families. She and Stephen shook hands 
warmly. 

Miss McKane, no longer young, was large but ex- 
cellently well-corseted. Her face was belaid with pink 
powder, and chalky with white, her eyebrows were the 
result of a pencil well-applied, and her hair was faded 
to that indefinite color peculiar to the aging blonde who 
for overlong against the inroads of time, has used sage 
tea ; or is it henna ? She wore about her throat a string 
of good Parisian pearls, and an exceedingly well-chosen 
chain dangled against her chiffon blouse, and carried 
a lorgnon. 

But not henna, nor any overlay upon her cheek bones 
of the bloom of youth, could rob Miss Kitty McKane 
of her eminently satisfactory personality. As capable 
as dependable, with a judgment shrewdly aware of 
human foibles, and also of the redeeming good along 
with the bad, she was retired on her earnings now. 
Long since an annual visitor to Paris, with a ten days’ 
stay in London, or upon the Riviera, she was a landed 
proprietor with a home of her own facing the park. At 
the theater on the first night of every play, her name 
as a donor on every charity list, making no claims, as- 
suming nothing, demanding nothing, yet in the regard 


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53 


of every one who knew her holding her own, she was a 
welcome friend in more than one household where, as 
a girl, she came twice a year as a seamstress. 

Mrs. Wing. — Kitty as a beneficent act, came out here 
several days before I got home, routed the servants 
out of their hibernating, and got the odor of moth 
balls out of the rugs and the curtains. She does 
such things for me because of everybody on this 
earth, I am come to depend on her. 

Miss Kitty (smiling ). — Needs must. 

Stephen (coming back at Miss McKane ). — My 
mother when she hears this, will feel she has a griev- 
ance. You wouldn’t come to her last autumn, when 
she was alone, and asked you. 

Mrs. Wing (tartly). — Don’t tell her then. This 
household has a claim on Kitty, prior to any you 
Janviers possibly can put forward. Place a chair 
for Kitty, Stephen, and bring your own nearer. 
And now sit down, you’re so big you darken the 
room. I hate to raise my voice, and I’ve a few 
things planned to say that are good for you to hear. 
You’re not to go, Kitty. I sent for you, when I saw 
Stephen arriving, because I wanted you here. 

Miss Kitty. — And if I’d rather go? 

Mrs. Wing (ignoring this ). — If I die one of these 
days at hand, and at my age who can say I may not, 
Kitty’s given me her word, she’ll close or rent her 
house in town, and come and stay with Lucy. Kitty 
McKane, if you do not know it, young man, is an 
amazing person. I’d trust Lucy to her sooner by far 
than to most. She’s familiar with my affairs and with 
my ideas concerning these, and is set down in my will 


54 


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as joint executor with two others, men of affairs 
these are, and with them joint guardian and adviser 
of my granddaughter. 

[She settled in her chair , her eyes surveying the 
one of them } and the other.~\ 

Mrs. Wing. — Lucy’s not here. I sent her across fields 
to a neighboring farm, fundamentally to take the 
dogs who needed a walk, and incidentally to inquire 
about some ewes that my man Jerry wants me to 
buy. You passed Jerry, my factotum as well as 
gardener, as you came in, Stephen. An old-timer he 
is, trained on your grandfather Janvier’s place; an 
invaluable person, I couldn’t do without him. 

[She cackled maliciously , fully aware evidently , 
that the loss of Jerry to the Janvier family 
never had been forgiven .] 

Mrs. Wing. — Lucy is no mean countrywoman herself. 
She and Jerry are great planners. I got rid of her 
this afternoon on the assumption that you meant 
what you said in your message to me of last night, 
and would be here. Sit down, I say, Kitty, sit 
down! Don’t keep standing there with your hand 
on the back of your chair ! You mean to go ; and I 
tell you I won’t have it! 

[Her eyes came back to Stephen .] 

Mrs. Wing. — Well? Why did you send me that 

rose last night? I prefer not to believe it was for 
impertinence. And what brings you here this after- 
noon? I’ve lived in this house all your life, 
and you’ve never showed your adult face here be- 
fore. 

Stephen (who has been gazing at Miss Kitty, gath- 
ering up, endeavoring to recall and rehearse certain 
facts in his mind, back of a consciousness that Mrs . 


MARCH ON 


55 


Wing, by general verdict , was irrevocably Miss 
Kitty > s debtor. If Mrs. Wing thought by her ques- 
tion to disconcert him she was mistaken in her per- 
son). — I came to call on you, and to see Lucy. And 
incidentally to tell you, so far as the intention can 
determine it, that I mean to marry her if she’ll have 
me. 

Mrs. Wing (after a second of silence, during which 
the cane propped against her chair , slipped crashing 
to the floor, Stephen picking it up and replacing it. 
She snapped her rejoinder, the words ejaculated 
fiercely). — Like a Janvier; ever a cocksure, a confi- 
dent lot; or like the one I knew best. 

[i She shifted in her chair . ] 

Mrs. Wing. — Kitty McKane, you made his pantie- 
waists-and-petticoats, as I reminded him, and later 
his blouses and monstrous collars when he was a 
Fauntleroy, and wore curls. I recall him thus, an 
angel child, following his mother into the family 
pew. You brought his smart sayings with you here, 
to babble about to me. You were a fool about him, 
and never got over the weakness. You marked a 
set of scandalous expensive handkerchiefs for him 
when he went off to college. Oh, I haven’t let on 
all I know. And you coaxed his pajamas at that 
same time from his mother, and yourself put his 
monogram on them. You hear this paragon of your 
so-long worshiping say that he’s going to marry our 
Lucy? 

Mrs. Wing (she turned again, bringing her gaze back 
to Stephen, who returned it). — ’Umph ! My theory 
always has been that nothing can be done unless it’s 
undertaken. Since you’re honest with me, I’ll be 
frank with you. It was with such an end in view, 


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a possibility long cherished, that I sent Lucy over 
last night to your uncle’s house. 

Miss McKane (her hold on the chair hack relaxing 
suddenly y and the chair scraping harshly and 
abruptly on the floor). — I’ll go back to what I was 
busy with upstairs. 

Mrs. Wing. — It’s news to Kitty, and she’s furious. 
She wants to tell me, and is afraid, that I’ve played 
with destinies before. She wants to remind me that 
Lucy is the apple of her eye, as of mine; wants to 
say that she’s brought her across to me in Europe 
more than once during the summers, to and from 
school, and kept her with her in Paris until I arrived 
there. That she’s mothered her since she was a 
baby, and won’t have this juggling and interfering 
with what after all is the girl’s own affair. Kitty 
wants to say all this to me, but ( triumphantly ) she 
doesn y t dare! 

Miss Kitty. — Perhaps I do dare. 

Mrs. Wing (her voice as suddenly become concil- 
iatory). — We exonerate you, Kitty, from all com- 
plicity, Stephen and I. Sit down, I say, sit down; 
you know the worst. As for you, Stephen, I’m 
nearing ninety, if you don’t know it. I was seventy- 
two when this great-grandchild was left in my care. 
I’m tired. I settled on you to give her to, six years 
ago. I long had thought about it for reasons of my 
own ; keeping a watch on you, the boy, the youth, and 
the young man; encouraging confidences from Kitty 
here as far back as her days as seamstress in your 
mother’s house; and she to this moment not suspect- 
ing it. Myself who never call on any creature, 
have maintained such a relation with your mother, 


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57 


alone of the Janvier connection. I reached my final 
decision on that occasion when you, with your 
mother, called on me. 

Stephen. — Thank you. 

Mrs. Wing. — Lucy was fourteen then; a coltish crea- 
ture; marvelously lovely in a high-legged, awkward 
way with that. I had kept her closely out here at 
Ashe, where she tore about the country the seasons 
through, a young Amazon on her pony. Familiarity 
seemed to me a factor against, rather than for my 
plans. Believe me, I can be patient and cunning, 
if I find the end seems worth while. The year she 
was fourteen, I put her away at school, and kept her 
away. 

[She paused , righted her cap with a jerk , then hit 
the floor with her cane.~\ 

Mrs. Wing ( to Stephen). — Don’t sit there staring like 
a reflective-eyed bovine! For God’s sake don’t tell 
me I’m mistaken after all, and have picked on a 
dummy! Warrington Adams is your intimate; this 
fact went far to sustain me in my own judgments. 
I’ve thrown Lucy a great deal with Warrington these 
last few years. He’s mentioned her to you ? 

Stephen (he has been regarding her fixedly, a thou- 
sand forgotten things newly grasped in their present 
significance, filtering through his brain). — And if I 
decline to give away Warrington’s confidences? 
(But he was smiling as he said this.) 

Mrs. Wing (she looked at him, speaking a little 
piteously now). — She is a lovely creature? I’m 
right about this, am I not? 

Stephen (rising, taking a step, and lifting the old 
hand, whose fingers were tapping the arm of the 


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chair, and carrying it to his lips). — Very; so very, 
very right. 

Mrs. Wing (her spirits returned at this, and speaking 
even gayly and briskly). — I brought my child up, 
Stephen, to the best of my ability. I put her to 
school to pick up the requisites only. I took her out 
of her classes whenever I desired. She went about 
with me at these times to learn the more important 
matters; something of men and women and things; 
and how to carry herself. Said I to myself, “No 
elaboration of overschooling for her; no overempha- 
sized attainments as shall make her opinionated, or 
yet self-conscious.” 

Mrs. Wing (she was leaning forward now towards 
Stephen). — Rather was it my plan to let her find out 
early what the world is ; to have her grasp the work- 
ings, good and bad, in human nature; to see that 
she learned to face life with comprehension, and un- 
flinchingly. To accustom her to go about for her- 
self, with the idea that a woman, young or old, intent 
on her own affairs, is safe under all but extraordinary 
and abnormal conditions. There’s nothing like com- 
mon sense when in the case of a woman, grace ac- 
companies this to soften it. My granddaughter has 
a sound instinct for people and things decent, but, 
thank God, she’s no prude . 

Mrs. Wing (leaning back, and smiling delightedly ) . — 
Kitty McKane, that I wouldn’t let go, is so outraged 
by now that her indignation is beautiful to behold! 
Kitty is a romantic. It’s the Achilles heel in a char- 
acter otherwise remarkably sound. She’s read every 
popular love story that’s appeared in forty years, 
and goes to every movie film that has love for its 
theme. She prefers to have you believe that Lucy’s 


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59 


some milk-and-water jeune file. Kitty suffers from 
that confusion in the mind peculiar to all sentimen- 
talists, of confounding ignorance with goodness ! 
****** 

The door swung farther open, and a Negro man- 
servant wearing a white jacket came in with a tray bear- 
ing a pitcher and glasses. He was elderly and spare, 
with white mutton-chop whiskers on an austerely set 
brown face. The very noiselessness of his entrance, 
together with the silent placing of the tray upon a table, 
drew the eye to him, and kept him the center of the 
attention. 

Mrs. Wing, fidgeting mightily, watched his move- 
ments; he with a pertinacious ignoring of first her, and 
then Miss Kitty, pouring and serving his claret lemon- 
ade according to his own, and not their, ideas. His 
withdrawal, in its turn, was a function. 

Mrs. Wing (bursting forth fiercely ). — Thomas Harris 
has kept me aware of my inferiority for fifty-one 
years, which is the exact period of time that he’s 
triumphed over me. He rules me, and humbles me, 
and knows it. For fifty-one years I’ve wanted to 
tell him to go, and aware that he’d look on it as an 
admission of my discomfiture, I’ve refused to be 
goaded by him to it! (She out-flung a hand.) 
There goes Kitty following him. If I’ve lost her 
through what she’s heard, and she goes back to town, 
with the servants out of hand, and not a curtain hung, 
I’ll set her loss down to you, young man! Put your 
glass down if it’s in your way, you don’t have to 
drink the mildly tinctured stuff, if you don’t want to. 
Stephen. — You’re not going to let me finish it? I’m 
not to have another glass? 


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Mrs. Wing. — Finish it and get through. I’m doing 
without my afternoon nap on your account. 

Stephen. — Yes, ma’am. (He said it meekly.) 

Mrs. Wing. — You’re not so docile as you appear, 
young man. I clashed with your blood sixty-odd 
years ago. Like as not I’ll never talk to you again 
in just this fashion. I make no apology. It’s the 
last wish of an embittered old heart to see you 
married to my Lucy. 

[ She settled back in the chair f her cap again fallen 
over one ear.~\ 

Mrs. Wing. — They’ll tell you hard things about me. 
Kitty will tell you these. And so will Philippa Jan- 
vier, your great-aunt, Mother Mary Gertrude, as she 
calls herself. When I could get down to Philippa 
in her convent school without too great fatigue, I 
went to see her. It’s too much of an undertaking for 
me now and we never meet. Philippa is that always 
arresting curiosity, a reversion to the faith of her 
forefathers. She wanted a vocation. There were 
few open to gentlewomen in those days. 

Stephen. — My aunt often has spoken to me of you. 

Mrs. Wing. — She and Kitty, and others less tolerant 
of me, will tell you how I treated my daughter-in- 
law. I’ll tell you that she was a clinging, weeping, 
weak-headed fool; this wife of my only son, who 
was killed at twenty-two on the field at Chickamauga, 
wearing the Confederate gray, like his father. And 
they’ll tell you how I treated the wife of my dead 
son’s only son, in her day; my grandson; a captain 
of volunteers in the Spanish war; fed on rotten food, 
rotted with fever in a filthy camp at Tampa, killed 
by his government. But I needn’t dwell on this with 


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6 r 


you, whp lost your father at the same time, and 
through the same scandalous betrayal. 

Mrs. Wing (sitting up fiercely). — I was talking about 
my two daughters-in-law, hateful relation; but we 
won’t say anything more about the dead. Maybe 
they’ve picked up more spirit beyond. I trust so. I 
abominate the overly good, which is to say, the spine- 
less woman, and so, I predict, do the angels. Here’s 
my point. The last thing of my own allowed me by 
life for cherishing, is this great-granddaughter, Lucy. 
She’s used to love, and to fair treatment. She’s fair- 
minded her'self, and affectionate to those few to 
whom her heart is given. The older generation 
hereabouts, your Uncle Stephen among these, must 
allow that old Lucy Wing, sharp-eyed macaw — how 
they love me — has scored to the end in this great- 
grandchild she’s raised; the crowning paradox to 
her worldly cynical life. 

Mrs. Wing ( after sinking back in her chair } to bring 
herself as quickly up again). — Not that Lucy is what 
Kitty McKane would have you believe, one of your 
innocents, your blood-sucking, none-the-less deadly, 
because flaccid, incapables. I’ve lived with two such,, 
the wife of my son, and the wife of my grandson, 
that I spoke of. What were both these women, 
offered by their Victorian day, as helpmates to these 
two men? They were negatives, sentimentalists, 
parasites. I’ve made of my Lucy a real woman, one 
who when her time comes, shall not be afraid to be 
herself; and if such be her destiny, will not be afraid 
to love and to yearn. It’s only fair I tell you these 
things. 


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Stephen ( rising ; for some few moments his gaze has 
been fixed, held by something beyond the window; 
he is smiling) .-—I see Lucy and the dogs that you 
spoke of coming across the grass. May I go and 
meet her? 

Mrs. Wing. — Whose child is she, pray? I don’t plan 
the future of a great-granddaughter every day. 
(But she, too, is smiling.) Lucy is a Wing, and 
through her mother she is a Rand, and through me, 
a Routt. Mettlesome bloods these all are in the past 
story of Kentucky. I never decry the power of the 
past in any of us. Awaken the woman in my child, 
and you call to life a creature who will hold you to 
account. And now I’m worn out. I’m an old 
woman, feeble, and overdue to be gone. Go meet 
Lucy, and, if it’s really your desire, find out if she 
wants you. 

The gaze of these two meeting, out of the encounter 
there appeared to come on each, a sudden panic. The 
young man stooping, touched her hand, a quick hand- 
clasp, abruptly through with. His breath came in 
little gasps. As for Mrs. Wing, wee old creature, she 
was crying weakly. 

A moment later, and Stephen’s voice calling, came in 
from the porch to Mrs. Wing in her chair. 

“Cheero, Lucy, I’m as good as my threat; I’m here, 
you see.” 


CHAPTER VI 


UCY coming with trailing feet and leaden slow- 



ness across the grass towards the house, paused 


at this call from the porch, and looked up. So 
did the escort at her heels, a venerable collie, a limping 
and ancient Irish terrier, and a fat spaniel. 

It is given to some human creatures to hold the 
delighted eye, and to satisfy the senses. Beneath her 
English garden hat, her face glowed with an English 
brilliance, its crimson vivid as a flower. Her sage- 
green smock was English, too, and struck Kentucky 
eyes as exotic. The lawn of clipped turf was behind 
her, with here and there a great still tree, and she made 
a picture that spoke of youth and love, as directly as 
any Romney portrait of Lady Hamilton whom she 
resembled, though here was a different enough na- 
ture. 

All day she had recalled Stephen’s intention to be 
here this afternoon, and beyond any control on her part 
had rejoiced. And all day she prayed that something 
would prevent his coming. 

She dared not trust herself, dared not risk herself 
with him. She was terrified at the direction of her 
impulse; at this crowding and resistless trend of her 
mind that was carrying her protesting to her fate. 

As she returned home from her errand, coming by 
a footpath that crossed the woodland and brought 
her to the grounds about the house, she saw the road- 


6 4 


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ster. Divining it was Stephen’s car, her feet dragged, 
and her progress was leaden. 

At the sight now of the figure in white flannels on the 
porch-step, her heart beat violently, and she feared 
she could not breathe. The presence in her conscious- 
ness of this young man was not a new thing. He had 
occupied a definite place in her thoughts. One and 
another thing had awakened this interest; remarks from 
Warrington Adams; words from Miss Kitty McKane; 
references by her grandmother. Yes, she saw this now. 
* * * * * * 
Stephen on his part as he stood there for the moment 
on the steps was beaming. Lucy seen thus by day 
ravished the heart of him. A gust of summer breeze 
caught her white skirt, whipping this about her, and 
fluttered her hat brim. 

Taking the steps at a leap, and the stretch of lawn 
at a sprint, he brought up before her and the dogs. 
His eyes swept her. How thrilling was her face! 
Her fine brows; her thin nose; her young lips that were 
at once so confident, and so imperious! 

“Lucy?” 

* * * * * * 

Now what can be done with a man such as this? In 
any other it would be insufferable. He baffled the girl. 
In sheer vigor alone, he made every creature else she 
could recall seem pale beside him. Beneath his sweep- 
ing gaze, she felt the color surging and deepening in 
her face. She hated him for this. Here was an 
abounding personality, clearly aware of itself, and pre- 
pared to use its endowments as such, to the utmost! 
She had a feeling of fighting for her life ! 

***** * 

He addressed himself at this, to the green and golden 


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65 


afternoon about him, grass, trees, flowers; or possibly 
it was to the errant wind that he spoke. 

“Her matter-of-factness dampens me; her indiffer- 
ence intimidates me. I and hope have traveled to- 
gether so far in our thoughts since we said good-by at 
the door of her car last night, we were prepared for 
something kinder.” 

He stooped, his fingers seeking and playing with the 
ears and the long head of the old collie. Then he 
straightened and regarded her. 

“Lucy, Tve confessed the enormity of my aspirings 
to your grandmother. If I’m not altogether absolved, 
at least I’m allowed to come and find you !” 

He bent again to pat the collie’s head, and again 
stood erect. 

“You’re thinking that I’m — shall I call it — nervy f 
And if this be the word, I am. So I am, Lucy. I’m 
taking long chances.” 

* * * * * * 

He pleased her better with this, and then, too, her 
heart was beating with less violence. Granting that he 
was tempestuous, there was a matter-of-factness with 
his vigor. He was a person, she began to grasp, in 
whose hands one could feel secure. And he had 
humor, this with its wholesomeness, a grace as saving 
as salt that savors. 

****** 

The while he was talking. “If you’re implying 
that I’m to dissemble, you must teach me, Lucy. For 
me, I haven’t the foggiest idea!” 

His eyes had found and were holding hers. Per- 
turbedly he was shaking his head. “You considerably 
upset me when you imply that this bluntness of mine 
is wrong ! Finding myself where I am to-day is amaz- 


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ing enough! Let me tell you this! And if you’re 

going to take away from me all my bearings 

“Lucy,” he spoke, oh, softly, softly; “it’s all of life 
to me, this thing come to me. I know this for a fact. 
Come, go along with me! Get the habit!” 

She pressed by him. Stephen turning, watched her 
go, a light within his deep-seated and smiling eyes. 
Diana of the severe beauty, and the inflexible carriage, 
virgin enemy to the approach of man ! Her would-be 
hounds as they moved off with her, doing their vener- 
able best to leap about her as she went; across the 
gravel of the driveway, about a purple beech that 
flanked the house, and so on around the side of the 
dwelling. 

To Lucy as she went, there was no likening of her- 
self with Diana, protectress of the sex! Her hand 
sought her racing heart, and two crystal tears which 
threatened her cheeks that so rarely thus were visited, 
were drops not alone of helplessness, but of terror. 
****** 
Stephen became aware of Mrs. Wing on the porch 
leaning on her cane, and cackling wickedly. He went 
toward her. 

He explained. “A sort of solemn joy overcame me, 
and when I came to, I found I’d let her go.” 

Mrs. Wing nodded. “She won’t be back, for I’ve 
no intention of sending for her, and suggesting she do 
so. The mischief whatever it be, is of your making. 
I’m tired. I’m going in to continue my nap, and you 
may as well back your car off the edge of my drive 
where I see you managed to leave it, and go home.” 
****** 

As Stephen reached his car, the Negro man, Jerry, 
came toward him. Stephen wondered that he had 


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67 


failed to place him. At one period of his life, when 
he was a little fellow, he knew him well. In color cafe- 
au-lait, Jerry with his eagle eye surmounting a curved, 
beak nose, proved to have the voice, light-timbred, thin, 
and deprecating, of a child. 

“I’m wonderin’ if you’ll carry a message to Miss 
Helen, yo’ maw, Mr. Stephen? She sent a inquiry to 
me las’ night by my sister’s boy, Julius Buck.” 

“Glad to, Jerry. How do you expect your friends 
to know you, when you don’t come forward and speak? 
Left us that long time ago to come to Mrs. Wing, did 
you? Hey, you old deserter?” 

The wit of Jerry was slow. He took Stephen’s sally, 
pondered it, then broke unexpectedly into chuckles. 
His body shook. 

“OF Miss sent me to yo’ grandpa, when I went. She 
sent fo’ me to come back after he died, en I come.” 

“So we found out. What’s your message to my 
mother? You and she have kept up your old-time 
friendliness then?” 

Jerry’s face with its melancholy cast of features, 
showed pleasure. His teeth which were long and nar- 
row, gleamed between his thin lips. 

“I wuz with yo’ grandpa when yo’ maw come there a 
bride. She knowed a heap about outdoors, en growin’- 
things, ez yo’ grandpa en me foun’ out. She wuz whut 
yo’ call a nachel-bawn bloom-coaxer.” 

“She’s keen to this day about her flowers, Jerry.” 

“So I know. She en me hev kep’ right erlong, when 
the chance come, aswappin’ whut we know. She spoke 
to Julius las’ night over to yo’ uncle’s. She wants to 
know whut I call them red lily whut I sent her a settin’ 
of las’ fall.” 

“And what do you call them?” 


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Jerry rubbed his jaw with a horny palm. “I called 
thet lily ‘To-Morrow,’ ’cause to-morrow never comes. 
OF Miss bought them bulb f’om one of them books, 
same ez she’s al’ays buyin’ some’n she don’t know 
nothin’ atall about. I put ’em in the groun’, en I 
waited. Waited two year fo’ ary bloom to show.” 

“Yet you left us when she wanted you?” 

Again Jerry’s hand sought his jaw and rubbed it 
slowly. His perturbation was evident. “OF Miss 
sure did hev a high regard fo’ yo’ grandpa’s jedgments. 
Seem-like thet’s why she wuz boun’ to hev me after 
he died. We’ve writ his name all over this place since 
I come back; writ it in the crops, en in the stock, en 
the breedin’ ; writ it in the flowers, en the young trees, 
en all the new plantin’.” 

****** 

Five minutes later Stephen’s roadster was eating up 
the distance between Ashe and the country house be- 
longing to his mother and himself. 

****** 

Half an hour later he came through a bit of private 
woods that lay between his own and his uncle’s house, 
following the footpath that traversed it. As he came 
out into his uncle’s grounds, the lawn and the trees 
glowed in the last level lights of evening. A long 
ray from the sun, itself a dazzling orb at this moment 
descending, struck slanting across the buff facade of the 
wide house. 

It was a one-storied dwelling above a high base- 
ment. Steps led to the porch, and there was a railed 
belvedere upon the roof. 

Built in a day when home-burned brick was more 
enduring than perfect in its fashioning, the house at 
the start was plastered and tinted, and so had con- 


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69 


tinued. It stood in the center of the lawn on a terrace 
cut by old stone steps and a flagging. In the lean years 
that followed the Civil War, the place through neces- 
sity was rented; and had a purchaser offered, must 
have been sold. 

Above the roof and the belvedere as Stephen drew 
near, bull bats were darting in long erratic sweeps and 
dives. From the woodland left behind, birdcalls fol- 
lowed him. Anne, in a muslin dress, was on the porch 
and alone, which could not better have pleased him. 
He went up the steps. 

“How are you, nice lady? Greetings!” 

He found a chair for himself, placing it beside the 
long one on which she lounged. 

She let her newspaper slip at this from her hand, and 
her face with its unmatched eyebrows, fine and dark, 
regarded him quizzically. She was a person, this aunt 
of his, devoutly to be desired as with, rather than 
against, one. 

“Auntie, when you plan to be, you’re a first-rate- 
woman-with-a-serpent’s-tongue.” 

“Really, now?” 

“I won’t enumerate instances in the past of your 
witticisms directed at what you were pleased to call my 
affairs of the heart. Please don’t do it now, that’s all. 
I’m liable to turn nasty.” 

“Straight tip, Stevie?” 

“Honest-to-goodness.” 

“I’ll be good.” 

He stretched out a hand, and took hers. “It’s such 
a wonderful, and a dumbfounding thing that’s hap- 
pened to me, auntie.” 

Her eyes, looking ahead of her, widened slightly, 
and then narrowed. 


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“So each of us think in our time,” she said it dryly, 
“See that you remember this by and by, about the time 
you develop weight, along with a penchant for big 
business.” She withdrew her hand. 

Stephen looked at her. He thought of his uncle, 
and his too great complacency, the price paid by him 
for success. Was the effulgence that once was, gone 
for her? The grace for her of a day that is dead, no 
longer to be recalled? 

Turning here in her chair and regarding Stephen, 
she took a brisker tone. 

“What do you know of Lucy Wing?” 

“You’ve seen her; dark-haired like yourself, and 
Miss Capulet, and W. Shakespeare’s dark lady of the 
sonnets. Eh, what?” 

“What else is she?” 

“Whatcher mean?” 

“Nothing belligerent, you don’t have to fight. Have 
I ever told you of Mrs. Wing, on the day when we 
women in Kentucky cast our first vote? Restricted as 
we are to a voice in the school elections only. Well, 
I’ll tell you now.” 

She sat up. 

“Mrs. Wing, who was eighty-five that spring, went 
by in her car for Miss Ellen Twitchell, also living at 
Ashe, ninety-two years old, and as you may or may not 
remember, the daughter of a long dead bishop of the 
state. The two, in Mrs. Wing’s car, proceeded to the 
butcher shop of Alonzo Simpson where the polls were 
held, alighted, and arm-in-arm went in, and cast their 
maiden votes.” 

Anne smiled at this picture of her recalling. “For 
Mrs. Wing, it was the triumphant close to two cam- 
paigns of long duration. Bishop Twitchell in his day 


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7i 


held violently with St. Paul that woman is the weaker 
vessel, and notoriously browbeat the women of his 
household, a wife and three daughters, and those of his 
flock, into submission. But not Mrs. Lucy Routt Wing, 
who after one especially violent altercation between 
him and herself, departed his fold, and became a Pres- 
byterian. For forty-odd years since, so she tells it, 
she’s worked toward two ends : one to obtain suffrage 
for women in Kentucky, and the other to see that the 
daughter of her ancient enemy exercised the privilege 
of the ballot when it arrived.” 

Mrs. Janvier’s eyes dwelt on the young man astride 
the chair beside her. The affection conveyed in the 
gaze was unmistakable. 

“When I came to Kentucky thirty years ago, Stevie, 
the husband of Mrs. Wing was pointed out to me. A 
dashing Confederate cavalryman in his day, the friend 
of Morgan and Duke, and fellow adventurer, he was 
as much a local asset as she. I often saw him on the 
street, and always the same. A dapper, elegant, young- 
old man, attired like a beau, invariably swinging a 
slender cane, and so one felt, the quintessence of re- 
finement. A person, I was told, with an even fanatic 
devotion to the canons of good taste, politely romantic, 
formal, a bit the precieuse , and always the gentleman.” 

Her gaze continued on Stephen. “He was a dash- 
ing figure when Lucy Routt married him, a bit the 
blade, known as well in New Orleans and St. Louis, as in 
Louisville, and of his world and hers, eminently the 
catch and the beau. They lived apart from the day 
that he, in the face of her infuriated opposal, entered 
the Confederate army. One fancies him in the suc- 
ceeding long years that followed the Civil War, a 
lonely and desperately hurt creature, sensitive of aspect 


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as he was, and living as he did alone with his servants 
in the Wing house in town — a house standing in a huge 
yard in the heart of town.” 

Anne leaned toward Stephen. “Understand me, 
dear boy; I’m dwelling on these things, why? Because 
I’m wondering what a personality such as Mrs. Wing 
has made of the granddaughter.” 

“Sweet lady, don’t be tedious. Give me your hand 
again, I’m monstrous fond of you. Look across the 
grass to the slope of the woods. See the last light 
gleaming through its every little glade and opening? 
I hope I’m asked to stay for dinner, since that’s what 
I’m here for? Mummy had a hurry call for dinner 
and bridge impromptu, an invitation omitting me.” 

“Stevie?” 

He turned to regard her. 

She spoke briskly. “There’s a lovely simplicity 
about Helen, your mother, as you’ve discovered for 
yourself, which makes for peaceful living for those 
about her. She accepts without dissent or discussion, 
the ultimatums of others. She asks me to go with her 
in her car over to Ashe to-morrow, to call on Mrs. 
Wing and Lucy.” 

Anne leaned and made a pass at her newspaper, 
which Stephen recovered and handed to her. 

“I told her that the visit to include me must be in 
the forenoon, as I’m due in the city at two o’clock at 
the women’s headquarters for a conference about this 
primary registration. I’ll take the trolley in from 
Ashe.” 

She paused, and resumed. “Because I’m as fatu- 
ously foolish about her self-willed son as ever Helen 
herself, oh, I’m positive I am, I’ll tell you of other 
plans.” 


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73 


She looked at him. “Your Lucy has agreed to assist 
me at the polls the day after to-morrow, from 6 A. M. 
to noon; at which hour other women will relieve us. 
It’s absolutely necessary for us women to get the vote 
out and registered; and we’ve apportioned the city 
among the women interested. It’s considerably a 
feather in the cap of my lately achieved public repu- 
tation to have with me the granddaughter of the newly 
returned, great suffragist, Mrs. Wing. I’m sending in 
two servants to open enough of the town house for 
Lucy and me to sleep there to-morrow night. This 
is easier than to get in from here by six o’clock. Shall 
I say that you’ll come by in your car during the after- 
noon, and bring Lucy in? For me to get her to town 
seems the least I can do.” 

She dropped back in her chair, and laughed. 
“That’s all. Except this, in respect of Mrs. Wing. I 
concede you that in this flux and flow of life as the 
less courageous of us know it, it’s something after all 
to ‘have opinions and convictions strong as hers.” 

“Auntie,” softly and rapturously, “you’re a top- 
notcher. I’ve always rated you such, and I’m right. 
Thank you for the thought and the — cooperation!” 


CHAPTER VII 


S TEPHEN appeared at Ashe the next afternoon, 
rounding up on the gravel before the house, again 
in a whir of startled and indignantly ascending 
pigeons. A suppliant arriving at the court of Venus — 
so the lively fancy of this exuberant young man — and 
disturbing her doves. 

Mrs. Wing was on the porch in a chair with her foot- 
stool and her cane. Lucy’s escort of yesterday, the 
three dogs, shared the steps. 

The collie arose from his place, descended to the 
gravel, and came forward to meet the guest, concealing 
his rheumatic twinges beneath the courtliness and the 
gravity of his welcome. The Irish terrier, never 
troubling to move from his position of survey on the 
step, wrinkled a black lip upward from a well-nigh 
toothless and mottled gum, and rolled a gleaming, small 
eye inquiringly within its curtain of wiry hair. The 
spaniel, her long ears all but touching the step as 
she rose, wagged a nubbin of a tail, and barked 
shrilly. 

Stephen distributing pats as he came, went up to 
Mrs. Wing. She gave him her hand. 

‘‘Well?” 

“There’s not a creature to compare with her, Mrs. 
Wing!” He made the statement ecstatically. 

“Perhaps not,” the rejoinder cama dryly. “She’ll be 
down. She’s ready.” 


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75 


“You grant me my own way? I may make my try 
for her in my own fashion? You trust me?” 

“I shan’t interfere so long as I’m satisfied. I dare 
assume for myself the nature of lover you’ll be.” 

“And how do you assume this, please?” 

“Sit down while you wait. Sit here. I dare think 
I know this because your grandfather, of whom you 
are the replica and have been all your life, made love 
to me. Now do you begin to understand?” 

Her eyes which had wandered, came back with a 
sudden fierceness. “I’m eighty-eight years old. The 
fires of life die hard. Remember that they do, young 
man. The soul in this old body still can grow faint, 
and this old frame trembles yet, at recall of that love- 
making.” 

The collie had come up the steps to the porch, as in 
answer to the stress and feeling in the old voice, and 
now stood, troubled and indeterminate, looking at Mrs. 
Wing. 

“Come to me, my old friend,” she said. 

The dog walked to her, noble-headed old creature, 
raising his glance as he reached her, and regarding 
her from wistful and questioning eyes. “You want 
me, my human friend? You have need of me? I then 
am here.” So the eyes, the lifted head, the slowly 
moving tail, all said. 

Her fingers smoothed the dog’s long head. “He is 
fifteen years old. I’ve an idea that he and I both will 
be going beyond before overlong, and I, who am de- 
pendent on good company, could wish it might be 
together.” 

“If my grandfather was the lover that you say, why 
did he fail?” 

“Here is why.” The reply came like the snap of a 


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whip, sharp, sudden. Mrs. Wing up-drew herself in 
her chair. “It’s as well you know why.” 

She seemed to choose her words. “I was not easy 
to win, do not think it. No truly proud spirit surren- 
ders with tranquillity. Your grandfather having won 
me, supposed he could put a ring upon my linger, and 
then march away with Zachary Taylor to Buena Vista, 
and the rest of it in Mexico. I was not first with him, 
you see.” 

She tapped with her cane upon the floor. “It’s not 
for naught that women through instinct hate war. You 
probably have been reared to reverence the sword he 
brought back from that campaign, and which, so I’m 
told, hangs beneath his portrait in your uncle’s dining 
room. Your grandfather went to Mexico, but he lost 
me. There are two factions in civilization, and I am 
of the nonmilitant faction. I never forgave him.” 

Lucy came out the door, followed by a colored 
woman who carried a bag; an elderly woman of 
upright carriage, with an impassive brown face that 
in its features and cast was a bit Coptic. Lucy gave 
Stephen her hand. 

She wore a skirt and blouse, and a jacket loosely 
belted. A small hat enfolded her head as its wings a 
bird. This according to Stephen. She had the build 
and the pliant carriage of the outdoor creature. Her 
hands were tanned, and the triangle at the base of her 
throat framed by the V of her blouse, was burned rosy. 

Mrs. Wing did not conceal her satisfaction in the 
girl’s trim appearance ; nor seek to hide her gratification 
in matters generally. It was evident that Lucy lent 
to this old age dwelling beside her more than a ray of 
youth’s brightness. 

“Go, the two of you, and seek happiness. I say so.” 


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77 


She sighed. “Would it were I. Si jeunesse savait, si 
vieillesse pouvait. Fifty years from now you’ll better 
appreciate, both of you, what this means.” 

The colored woman had carried the bag to the 
car, where she stood with it, waiting. As Stephen and 
Lucy joined her, Jerry appeared around a clump of 
shrubbery, shoving his pruning shears into the pocket 
of his overalls as he came. Approaching, he stood be- 
side the woman, chuckling mildly, and full of the inter- 
est of seeing the two off. 

One saw from the likeness between Jerry and the 
woman, that they were kin, as in fact they were, brother 
and sister. Where the face of Jerry in repose was 
frankly melancholy, that of Ellen was impassive. 

The next moment as beneath Stephen’s hand the 
car started, the pigeons- arose, whirring and circling. 

* * * * * * 

The roadster rushed along the stretch of pike. Open 
country was on each side. The corn, newly sprouted, 
was green in the furrows, the wheat amber-golden in 
the fields. The pastures were dotted here with herds 
grazing, there with ewes and their lambs. Locust trees 
along the fence lines, were weighted with blossoms 
that filled the afternoon with honeyed sweetness. A 
cardinal cut the air in front of the car, a streak of 
scarlet from a cedar on the one hand, to a hackberry 
on the other, a sky-blue jay in chattering pursuit. An 
oriole, orange and black, rushed from a thicket of sas- 
safras in the wake of his fleeing mate, calling as he went, 
“Caleb Wheeler, Caleb Wheeler!” 

Stephen, guiding the car, swept the girl beside him 
with a glance. Her eyes looked ahead, and her straight 
brows were knitted. He read her to be passionately 
of a mind, be this mind whatever, and to this extent 


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determined. Witness the full, small, and closely closing 
mouth. 

His mind switched of a sudden to an incident long 
forgotten. His cheeks reddened. 

The hark-back took him to an old gallery of frescoes 
and marbles. He was a lad of fourteen, and it was his 
first sight of Italy, indeed of Europe, he being abroad 
with his mother for the summer. 

It was in a corridor of an old palace, he remem- 
bered. He, the boy from Kentucky, and she, the girl 
in marble, a bust on a pedestal, were alone. The mar- 
ble was old, but the patrician Roman girl like himself, 
was young, witness the full, small mouth closely closing, 
the small high nose, the grave young severity. The 
boy had glanced about him, yielded to the madness 
seizing him, the immortal youth in him to the youth 
and beauty immortal in her, and started to kiss her. 
He had stopped, stayed in the act. Some sense within 
him had grasped the eternal sanctity of the individual 
creature, and glimpsed that for him to take what those 
small grave lips did not give, marble though these be, 
was to rape that youthful mouth of its immortalized 
virginity. The red upon the cheek of the man recalling 
burned dully anew. 

Lucy beside him gazed on ahead. The agony of 
gladness that she felt at his coming this afternoon 
seemed to her the measure of her humiliation. It was 
as though the conquered, free woman at the wheels of 
her conqueror kissed her chains. And yet this Stephen 
by her side seemed to shame her, a person to life so 
friendly, and in honesty so superb. Against the abound- 
ing fullness of his nature, hers seemed meager, seemed 
furtive and ungenerous. Is woman at base less ad- 
mirable then than man, the girl asked herself, that she 


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cloaks herself with dissimulations and dissemblings? 
Is she by nature, man’s inferior in frankness and in 
courage? Or is this through heritage, her tragedy? 

The mind of Stephen had switched again. He, this 
time, was standing between the borders of his mother’s 
flowers, the grassy path dewy with the early morning. 
Garden scissors in hand, he was pausing before the 
blossoms he had been sent to cut, abashed before their 
perfection; milk-white phlox on tall stems of green; 
iris of crisp tissue, white, mauve, and faintly lemon; 
snapdragon rosy as aurora. It had seemed to him at 
the moment that no human creature is worthy the 
perfection of a perfect flower. 

“Lucy,” he turned abruptly to her, and his words 
came humbly and beseechingly, “God puts it into the 
heart of a man so to regard one woman, that he finds 
courage not in his worthiness, but in his necessity.” 


CHAPTER VIII 


NNE JANVIER came down the stairs of her 



town house at something before five o’clock the 


■** next morning, with her hat and jacket on, ready 
for the day’s program. The front door was open, and 
Stephen, her nephew, was standing on the stone steps 
in the cool gray wet of the morning, bareheaded, and 
smoking a cigarette. Beyond him, the street brooded, 
silent and deserted. 

“Where did you come from, Stephen? Did you stay 
in town last night? What do you want here?” 

He flung away his cigarette, and came in. “I slept 
around the corner in our house. I had my key.” 

He kissed her lightly on the cheek, at which she 
looked at him sharply. 

“Get it out, Stevie,” she said. 

“You, ma’am, are in this thing to-day, through what 
for you individually at the start, was the humor of the 
thing. Once there you found yourself pleased with the 
excitement you find in it, and with the prominence in it 
for you. In this issue that’s up, this fight for the 
schools against the old ring, you’re titillated with the 
uncertainty of whether you women are capable of put- 
ting it over. For you, the whole business is a new sen- 
sation. You were greatly bored anyhow, and in need 
of something novel. But why Lucy sacrificed to your 
conceit? Why Lucy as a tout?” 

Anne, having placed her gloves and her bag upon 


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81 


a chair, here stared at him, then gave way to mirth. 

Stephen regarded her calmly. “I can’t see why you 
shouldn’t give me breakfast, ma’am? I’m here because 
I propose to go along, and assure myself you’re wanted 
where you propose to be. You’re a novelty not assim- 
ilated by the male voter in these parts, as yet.” 

Anne still was full of her mirth. Its cause was not 
so obvious. “Motor cars are deemed bad policy for 
certain neighborhoods, Stevie. Come along, guard 
your Una if you think best, especially from us heart- 
less ones of her sex, who’d throw her to the lions. 
We’re using the street car.” 

Lucy appeared on the landing, and came down the 
stairs. 

****** 

When the three left the house, not a soul other than 
themselves, was to be seen. The neighborhood was 
asleep, and their footsteps rang on the sidewalk. The 
pale sky above their heads was taking on the deepening 
tinge of full-arriving day. The dew on the lawns be- 
fore the dwellings, and that which dripped from the 
trees along the curb, trees newly in full leaf, filled the 
air with a wet, cold sweetness. 

Anne glanced at Stephen. Again she was visited by 
her mirth. Then with a liveliness touched with ecstasy, 
and meant for him, she spoke to Lucy. 

“You, and your generation, take these crowding and 
amazing new departures, as they seem to my generation 
here in the south, so bluntly, so for granted? Frankly, 
I’m in a funk. I’m more relieved than I can tell you, 
that in my vast inexperience, you’re with me.” 

Lucy nodded. “I wish I better knew these local 
conditions. I’ve worked, of course, and not a little; 
but this, you see, was in England, under grandmother’s 


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militant friends. I marched in the Easter demonstra- 
tion in London this year. Grandmother provided a 
banner for the occasion that read, ‘Unfranchised 
America.’ ” 

Anne with the tail of her eye on Stephen, misstepped 
off the curb into the gutter. They had reached a cross 
street, and were waiting for the approaching trolley. 

* * * * * * 

Anne and Lucy paused for a moment on the platform 
before entering the car. There were two passengers 
within, workmen with their dinner buckets, a white 
man, and a Negro. Lucy was for business. 

“Wherever these two men are bound, they haven’t 
registered.” 

The girl, as she might have stripped off jewels, had 
put away every hint of sex. She was matter-of-fact. 
It was Anne who looked appalled. Lucy went forward 
into the swaying car as she finished speaking, and Anne 
after a second of irresolution, and with a grimace over 
her shoulder at Stephen on the platform behind her, 
followed. 

Are we, or not, free agents? Anne overtook Lucy 
in the aisle. The seats in the car ran lengthwise. The 
car lurched as it swung about a corner, and Anne sat 
down abruptly, beyond any volition with her, by the 
Negro man. Seeing this, Lucy went forward, and took 
her place near the young white workman. 

The Negro was middle-aged. If any white creature 
south of the Ohio River knew the older portion of the 
colored race it was Anne. A second while she recov- 
ered from her plunge, and at some word from her, the 
Negro faced about, his face breaking into a broad smile, 
and as she continued to speak, himself fell to chuckling. 
God knows what she said, but whatever it was, it was 


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83 


the right thing. Anne of all people, in a case such as 
this, was to be trusted. Stephen who had entered the 
car, at this went forward, and after a questioning inter- 
change of glance with Lucy, sat down across the aisle 
from her and the young white workman. 

****** 

Are we, or not, in truth, free agents? Was the 
juxtaposition of these three at this moment, at some- 
thing before six o’clock on a June morning in a com- 
mon carrier, ordained from the beginning of things? 
These three young people, Lucy Wing, Stephen Jan- 
vier, and the man with the dinner bucket, whose for- 
tunes, and whose destinies, and the destinies of those 
yet unborn, were from this moment, irretrievably com- 
mingled? 

If not foreordained, then through what agent, or 
agency, came the conjunction? Was it determined fifty 
years before, when Mrs. Lucy Routt Wing, outraged 
by an overarrogant sense of masculinity in an old Epis- 
copal bishop, took her initial step in conscious and 
affirmed femininity? Or was Anne Janvier the agent 
when she, on the evening of her daughter-in-law’s rag- 
time dance, set herself to secure this granddaughter of 
Mrs. Wing for her companion to-day? 

Since the young workman, the third in the group, 
started life half the width of the world from this town 
in Kentucky, what were the old-world conditions that 
so shaped the direction of his future, as to bring him 
to this part of the world, and to this encounter of this 
morning? 

Lucy, turning and regarding the man, caught his 
eye. “I’m wondering if you’ll let me tell you why I’m 
on my way this early in the morning to the polls at 
Franklin and Adams streets?” 


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Behind this act of Lucy, generation behind genera- 
tion, race behind race, stood woman of all time, Anglo- 
Saxon, Celtic, Gallic, Teutonic, Slav, Tartar, Mongo- 
lian, Latin, Greek, Egyptian, Semitic; and overshadow- 
ing these generations of woman, stood eunuch, squire, 
duenna, gouverneur, and chaperon. Sudden-swift in 
the end was the liberation. Lucy, young, vivid, and 
composed, apparently alone at this hour of the day in 
a street car, spoke briskly and pleasantly to the young 
man. 

He swung about. He wore a cheap suit of wool, and 
a cap of white cotton cloth with a visor of patent 
leather. A tin bucket with a tin cup fitted on the lid, 
sat upon his knee. 

His answer in its good humor, and its assumption 
of entire equality, was unexpected. He was at his ease, 
and smiling. 

“Sure, you may tell me. There’s nothing I like 
better than the other side of almost anything, as the 
other side sees it.” 

One would say the man was in his early thirties. 
His upstanding hair, seen now as he pushed his cap 
back from his forehead, was as ingenuously flaxen as 
the down of a newly fledged duckling; his blue eyes 
on the contrary were disconcertingly keen; and his 
strongly built nose rippled unexpectedly below the 
bridge, this undulating outline carrying with it a sug- 
gestion of laughter. 

Lucy gathered together her next words. “My friend 
and I,” she nodded towards Mrs. Janvier farther down 
the car, “are busy in the interests of the local schools. 
We’re trying to get our vote out to-day, and regis- 
tered.” 

The man, still smiling, shrugged his shoulders. He 


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85 


had strong and extremely white teeth in excellent con- 
dition. “That as well as anything. It’s the point of 
view rather than the subject, you see, that will interest 
me.” 

Lucy glanced at him. One wonders just what were 
his speculations about her. 

She gave her facts, keeping to the point. They were 
peculiar to the local situation. 

After which he changed his dinner bucket from the 
one to the other knee, and said nothing. 

Her color rose. She spoke sharply. 

“You’re married?” 

He smiled. “Yes.” 

“You have children?” 

“I have one.” 

“Of school age?” 

“A boy, nine years old.” He showed every smiling 
willingness to answer her questions; but of himself he 
proffered nothing. 

She regarded him afresh, the line of her brows in- 
drawn with a frown. Indignant at being resisted, one 
saw now that she at heart was imperious; an imperi- 
ousness, one would say, not alone of youth, but of 
class; of generations behind her accustomed to dom- 
ination. 

She spoke with impatience. “Can’t you then for the 
sake of your son, see the points I make? Don’t you 
agree that he has a right to the best that we — you 
and I — the taxpayers — shall agree among ourselves 
shall be given him?” 

Her manner changed. Her brusqueness gave place 
again to briskness. “My name is Lucy Wing. I live 
at Ashe, a suburb. My grandmother pays taxes to a 
considerable sum on property here in the city. I’m in 


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this fight as her representative. I’m approaching you 
as a fellow taxpayer.” 

His teeth gleamed. “I’m Eugene Lelewel. No, 
there’s nothing that your schools, ill-run or well-run, 
can offer my son that I’m willing he shall receive.” 

“I don’t believe I understand.” 

His smiling amiability was the thing about him most 
provocative. Her brows were indrawn again, as he 
answered. 

“How can you understand when you — I take it — are 
a product of the national idea that’s responsible for 
your schools?” 

“Explain.” 

He visibly was amused at this so complete reversal 
of the start, she who was so imperiously the instructor, 
seeking instruction of him. Her color heightened, and 
her lips tightened. 

“You, even in your walk of life,” he accompanied 
this placing of her with a smile, and a lift of his shoul- 
ders, “may have heard the term Internationale? Or its 
equivalent in this country, I. W. W.?” 

She nodded briefly. She was offhand and unim- 
pressed. “Oh, yes, England right now’s full of ’em. 
Hyde Park at Easter when we were in London, was 
noisy with ’em. Italy has them too; there they call 
themselves Social Democrats, as we found as we came 
north from Egypt, held up as we were in Florence by 
railroad strikes. Our foreign mail yesterday, news- 
papers and magazines, is full of their last demonstra- 
tion in France, plunging Paris into darkness. My 
grandmother refers to this last bit of activity in a letter 
in a local newspaper to-day.” 

He squared around, steadying his dinner bucket 


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87 


with a hand, and viewing her now with undisguised 
curiosity. 

The foreign-born population in Kentucky at that 
moment, was less than twelve per cent of the whole; 
the native-born, home-staying Kentuckian, had mild 
interest in the cabled items of foreign news, as reported 
in his local newspapers. The affairs of continental 
Europe at that time engrossed the average Kentuckian 
but very little more than the possible affairs of an 
inhabited Mars. 

The man was reached at last. A ripple of some 
nature of feeling passed over his face. Was it a flash 
of triumph? Or was it amusement, as ironic as it was 
smiling? 

“Your world then, does take some manner of note 
of us , and our world? Does concern itself in a little 
vital reading of the general world’s pulse? May I be 
permitted to congratulate you and your grandmother?” 

“Why can’t our schools do anything for your son? 
What is it you’re unwilling for him to receive?” 

“I’m unwilling for one thing, that he shall receive 
your national habit of mind. There are no partitions 
up to now in my boy’s mind, because neither I nor any 
one else have erected any there. He sees the world as 
he should see it, as one big room.” 

Stephen, across the aisle, saw Lucy lift her dark eyes, 
and look again at this chance companion. This com- 
panion with the silver-blond hair, and the sophisticated 
and amiable face, saw the look too, and laughed out- 
right. 

“An enemy to your schools is abroad to-day, that 
you did not include in your program. Yes, we’re here 
in Kentucky, too; as we’re coming to be everywhere. 


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There’s nothing your schools can offer my son. Take 
numbers. If my son goes to your schools, he gets the 
decimal system. We Internationales prefer the metric 
system as more universal, as well as more scientific. 
I’m giving him the metric system as his standard of 
permanent values; any others, your decimal system 
among these, I give him as expedients which he is to 
master, ultimately to sweep away. 

“Take history. Or as I show my son he should 
regard it, perverted history. Your schools offer him 
history not only unrelated, but as filtered through the 
national bias. I’m giving him history as a unit.” 

She was regarding him thoughtfully. “Will I meet 
many to-day who think as you?” 

He glanced out the window behind him, and pressed 
the bell. “No. The few thinking as I do, into whom 
you may run, won’t bother you. It fell in with my 
humor of the moment, you see, to show you our side. 
We prefer the present evil. We for the present, work 
against our ultimate aim, rather than for it. Succes- 
sive defeats of the popular will by the machinery of 
existing governments will sooner bring about the over- 
throw of the governments as we hope to see these over- 
thrown. We vote right now with these existing govern- 
ments.” 

He laughed. “We would give the exploiters of your 
public utilities here in America, your abusers of special 
privilege, freer rein. We delight to see such policies 
as maintain in your municipal governments get their 
way. These things undermine the faith of the masses 
in their governments. We regret right now any too 
precipitate action. I lived about; in Vienna; in Italy; 
in Buenos Aires; in London; in Paris; in Moscow. 
Nowhere are we ready. Everywhere we have to edu- 


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89 


cate our sons and daughters to an international habit 
of mind.” 

He laughed and stood up. The car had stopped. 
“I get off here.” 

Lucy rose herself. Mrs. Janvier and Stephen, on 
their feet, were waiting for her. The car had filled. 
The Negro man long since had gone. She followed 
her companions to the door. As the three of them, 
alighting, made for the curb, Anne spoke to Lucy. 
About them was a squalid neighborhood, invaded by 
modern plants and factories; their buildings towered, 
shining and new amid the levels of shabby frame cot- 
tages, corner groceries, and saloons. 

“Can you see some roofs and water tanks beyond 
us there? On the street beyond this one? That’s the 
brewery where we speak at noon for five minutes to 
the workmen. Old Mr. Weimar, the proprietor, whom 
I went myself to see about it, agreed that we should.” 

Lucy’s erstwhile companion, the workman with his 
dinner bucket, was taking the curb just ahead of them, 
and turned at this, swinging off his cap, his blonde hair 
shining in the sunshine, as with a nod to Lucy, his 
glance took in her companions. Replacing the cap, he 
gained the sidewalk, turned into the cross street, and 
was gone. 

* * * * * * 

Stephen for the second time to-day got off the cross- 
town car at Laurel and Franklin; and for the second 
time made his way along Franklin to the intersection 
of Adams. Pausing here on the sidewalk across from 
the bakery wherein was the registration booth, he took 
his stand on the curb. Anne and Lucy, on being re- 
lieved at noon by other women workers, were to have 
lunch with him downtown. 


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They appeared in time and crossed the street, ap- 
proaching him. “We’ve our date at the brewery,” 
Anne said; “we can’t go with you yet.” 

“I thought I’d go with you.” 

“Oh.” 

****** 

Mr. Weimar apparently was as good as his word. 
The three, as they entered the main doorway of the 
plant, were met by the manager, as stolid and heavy 
as the buildings of the brewery itself. Bells and whis- 
tles were announcing noon, as the four emerged on an 
inner court, where they found the workmen already 
pouring into the place through two great archways. 

They came stolidly, some few putting on their coats 
as they came, an unhandsome lot on the whole, and in 
need of shaving. Stephen and Lucy stood with the 
manager to one side of the doorway through which the 
four had come; Anne took her place upon the step. It 
put her a couple of feet above the level of the court- 
yard, the men ranged about her in a semicircle, two 
and even three deep. 

Anne was a charming woman; one not above profit- 
ing by and through this charm when she felt the need, 
and saw the way. There was something irresistibly 
pleasing in this irregular face of hers, and its quizzical 
play. She strove to profit by these things in herself 
now. Where she stressed her words, she smiled: 

“It’s an insult, of course, to any man, to believe it’s 
possible to influence his vote as he may have planned 
it; provided the man himself knew all the facts in the 
case in question. Mr. Weimar has agreed that I may 
take five minutes of your time to-day, and for which I 
thank you , and him. I want to rehearse to you certain 
facts about our schools. I am sure those of you who’ve 


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already registered, will be willing to hear me rehearse 
these facts quickly, for the benefit of those who will 
go this noon, or later, to register. I ” 

A man in a cheap wool suit, wearing a cap of white 
cotton cloth with a visor of patent leather, stepped 
out of the line of the semicircle. It was Lucy’s com- 
panion of the morning. He threw up a hand mildly, 
if one can so convey the sense of good humor that 
went with the act. 

Anne broke off. “You wish to say something?” 

He swung his cap off easily. “Somebody’s ahead of 
you. It’s only fair we tell you so. These men, myself 
with them, were given an hour — ten to eleven — and 
told what to do.” 

It was Eugene Lelewel speaking. His manner con- 
veyed no venom, rather that dryness which is kin to 
humor. 

****** 

Stephen sat at luncheon with his two guests. He 
was arguing. “But, my dearest auntie, don’t blame old 
Mr. Weimar. Blame yourself for the position you, his 
old neighbor, put him in. The local machine that’s 
fighting you in this matter of the schools, controls every 
licensed saloon in the city, and most of the road houses 
in the county. Mr. Weimar runs a brewery.” 

Anne still was very angry. “I’m obliged to you, 
Stephen, for finding the man for me in the general 
exodus, and thanking him. You say he’s a foreman 
in the cooperage plant?” 

Lucy looked up from her salad. “Does this mean 
that he’ll lose his place?” 

Stephen couldn’t say. “I’m speculating as to that 
myself. I asked him for his address, and told him 
I’d look him up.” 


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He leaned forward. “Tell me the truth, Lucy. 
Are you horrifically tired?” 

She showed surprise, as if this was a new view- 
point for the modern young person, from which to 
see herself. “I don’t believe I get tired. I don’t seem 
to recall it if I do. I’m the hopelessly robust sort, 
always well. Do you mean I ought to be tired?” 

He turned to Mrs. Janvier. He beamed. “Auntie, 
lend yourself to me for the afternoon. Go with me.” 

“Can’t, my boy; I’m due back at headquarters to 
relieve the field workers. I won’t get home until night. 
Go with you where?” 

“To see Aunt Philippa. Shall we go, Lucy?” 

Anne put down her tea glass. “Lucy, listen to me. 
Stephen, where our sex is concerned, is a reactionary.” 

“ ’Fore God I’m not, Lucy. Here’s gratitude; after 
giving this aunt of mine, as I have, the most of my 
day!” 

Anne arose, and gathered up her gloves and her 
bag from the chair beside her. “Turn him down, 
Lucy; he’s the reverse of the shield; like his great-aunt 
Philippa, he’s a hark-back. Turn him down.” 

Lucy smiled. “But you see, I want to go. I call her 
Aunt Philippa, myself. We motored down five years 
ago before I went away to school, and I haven’t seen 
Aunt Philippa since.” 

“Foiled, Missus, foiled!” Thus Stephen. He 
turned to Lucy. 

“It’ll get us back to Ashe late, of course. Shall I — 
or do you prefer — to telephone before we start, to your 
grandmother?” 


CHAPTER IX 


T HE two, Stephen and Lucy, had something over 
thirty miles to cover of limestone pike, a high- 
way venerable with traditions of years as these 
things are reckoned in Kentucky; which now climbing, 
and now momentarily dropping, the while steadily 
ascended, traversing an upland country given over to 
agriculture. A country it was, characterized by num- 
berless streams, by great sycamores that ever love a 
well-watered region, and by gray bridges. The high 
ridges traveled every while, backbones of the innum- 
erable watersheds, afforded views of far-spreading 
country. 

It was past four when the roadster turned off the 
highway. Speeding in this new direction, they brought 
up shortly before tall gates, large grounds, and a group 
of buildings. 

Lucy’s interest as they entered was tinged with an 
eager concern. “Yes, I’ve kept it in my mind as it is; 
the shrine, the grotto, the walks; the beds of geraniums, 
and heliotrope, and gladioli ; the meticulousness rather 
than the beauty.” 

Stephen helped her out before the main building. 
They had telephoned before starting, and were ex- 
pected. The door opened as they reached it, and a 
little sister with eyes shyly smiling a welcome from 
under a white forehead-band, took them in charge. 
She was past middle age, yet with her shyness, and her 
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hands folded in front of her within the long sleeves, 
she suggested perpetual youth. 

She led the way along a central hall. The floor be- 
neath the feet was waxed and polished. As Lucy re- 
membered it, there had been a strip down the center 
of cocoa matting, harsh to the feet, and a painted floor. 

The little portress tapped at a door, then threw it 
open. “They are here, Mother.” 

Her face in its shy pleasure as she turned to the two 
seemed to reflect some of the brightness of their own 
youth. It was evident that she and Stephen were old 
friends, and that her pleasure in Lucy, was hardly less. 

“It’s Sister Veronica!” said Lucy, suddenly. The 
little portress smiling, nodded, and was gone. 

Mother Mary Gertrude, known to the world she left 
behind her, as Philippa Janvier, had turned about in a 
swivel chair from the desk where she was busied. Her 
face like that of the portress was framed in snow-white 
linen, and as she rose and came to meet them, there 
was a rustle of her robes, and a swinging out and 
back against her skirts of her rosary beads. 

She was brisk and portly, seventy-five years old and 
not looking it, a woman in whom vigor was a more 
abiding quality than grace. The room about her sug- 
gested in part an office, and in part an audience-room. 
Its two windows looked out upon a side yard and the 
tops of lilac bushes, with a sky seen through the tree 
tops of forget-me-not blue, over-traveled by white 
clouds touched with radiance. 

Smiling as she came forward with both her hands 
out to Lucy, she took and held those of the girl full 
a moment in her own. Looking her over, up and down, 
she spoke. 

“When I saw you for the first time in your life, my 


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dear, dear child, it was in this room. You were quite a 
little girl, probably around six years old; with amazing 
crimson cheeks, and a monstrous doll in your arms, the 
apple — it was easy to see this — of your grandmother’s 
eyes.” 

The reverend mother’s voice was singularly pleasant 
and composed. She released the girl’s hands. 

“Sit here on the sofa, Lucy. Now, Stephen, you 
know very well I’m not going to let you kiss me. Why 
go through the form of attempting it every time you 
come down here to see me? I’ll take your hands, both 
of them, since you insist. You’re no better behaved 
than always, I see.” 

The eyes beneath the white forehead-band, they were 
amber eyes flecked with gray, were going from the 
young man, her nephew, to the girl now seated on the 
sofa. If she was surprised that these two were come 
here to see her together, she gave no sign. 

Each eye reads for itself. The old nun who had 
been of the world in her day was skilled at reading 
character. It had been her business so to do for many 
years. 

She took a likeness for herself of this granddaughter 
of Lucy Routt Wing. Withal a man’s woman, not a 
woman’s, she told herself; in this resembling her grand- 
mother. Sure to attract; cold to this knowledge now; 
a creature to whom it might come in time, however, to 
use her charm and her cleverness to sway men’s pas- 
sions. 

She took her seat on a straight chair. “Tell me 
about your grandmother, Lucy! Has she come home 
this time to stay? I judge she’s as violent as ever in 
her stands, from the communications over her name, 
I see from time to time, in our papers. You look sur- 


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prised? You suppose then that I don’t keep up with 
the world?” 

The granddaughter laughed. The thought of her 
grandmother’s sallies into print introduced into this 
guarded dovecote amused her not a little; concerned 
as these were with issues such as the age of consent, 
birth control, a common standard in sex morality, and 
matters of like nature. 

‘‘Grandmother’s more than ever convinced that the 
feminine quantity admitted into world affairs thus far 
masculine is to regenerate the world. She contends 
that male and female in every sense is the normal state, 
the law of nature. Her intensity never slackens, it only 
grows. She’s come to be actually niggardly, Aunt 
Philippa.” 

She here laughed outright. “Our place at Ashe is 
shabby; outrageously so. Miss Kitty and I have to 
fight merely to -get the front gates painted. Everything 
saved above what grandmother calls our necessities, 
goes to such organizations as she’s assured in her own 
mind are furthering the feminist cause on this side of 
the Atlantic, or the other.” 

Mother Mary Gertrude in her stiff straight chair 
nodded comprehendingly. Her face within its banded 
setting was enlivened with a shrewdness which is the 
fruit of a sound humor. 

“At the opposite poles all our lives, Lucy Routt 
and myself! Mountain defying mountain across the 
valley of decision, not more immovable than she and 
I in our respective stands throughout the sixty-odd 
years of our intimacy! Well, it’s something for an 
average maintained one way and another, I suppose, 
that heaven does so center its opposing forces.” 

The old religieuse laughed with hearty enjoyment. 


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“The new woman is not the only one of her sex who 
follows an idea, Lucy, though Lucy Routt Wing would 
have you think so. This school with which you asso- 
ciate me, is among the oldest schools for girls in the 
south.” 

The person, voice, manner, and carriage, of the old 
nun changed. She was her office; and also as it proved, 
she was the scion of her line! 

“Do you chance to know the story of the French 
ladies at Port Royal, my child? Well, that’s better 
than I hoped of the modern education. Two of my 
blood, the Janvier-Arnauld blood, were part with the 
movement with other great ladies in appointing them- 
selves the guardians of the morals and manners of 
France.” 

She spoke with the placidity which at base is author- 
ity. “I’ve been here in this, my chosen Port Royal of 
the western world, for forty-nine years; a self-ap- 
pointed guardian, as might be, of the morals and 
manners of the south. Five decades of graduates have 
gone out from under my direction, and my jurisdic- 
tion.” 

Each word at this, came clear and impressive : “The 
aim with the group of devoted women who serve here 
from time to time with me is to make a shrine of each 
of these young hearts , wherein its owner as her part 
in life , shall guard the flame of the home; the home , as 
we endeavor to have each pupil see, being the soul of 
a people; and a people without a soul , being already 
dead! This evening when you get back to Ashe, tell 
Lucy Routt I told you this. I can hear the sniff with 
which she’ll receive it!” 

Mother Gertrude laughed again with heartiness; 
then again became grave. “Do not imagine, Lucy, 


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that it is any negligible thing — the integrity of the 
home; which we handful of contemplative women with- 
in these walls dedicate ourselves to defend. Seeing to 
it that always throughout the twenty-four hours of the 
day, one of our number is on her knees before the altar 
in prayer; including in these prayers, the thousand thou- 
sands of women throughout the world, who find their 
privileged vocation in the home” 

A sternness touched the old nun’s face and her utter- 
ance, as in arraignment of enemy forces visible to the 
eye of her mind. “These women of the millions of 
homes are not vocal, Lucy. Things of the spirit are 
not so easily voiced. Creatures of instinctive abnega- 
tion these millions of home-makers are, who too often 
in their routine service for others, forget to pray for 
themselves.” 

She took a sprightlier tone. “I’m vain-glorious, 
Lucy, a cardinal sin. Estimating highly as I do, the 
French blood that is in me, I take pride that this school, 
that was old when I became its head, is of transplanted 
French inception. We emigre blood in America, fol- 
lowing, not supplanting, the French blood of the ex- 
plorer and settler who came earlier, stand for some- 
thing in the character building of this country, believe 
me, my child.” 

Humor shone from the resolute eyes. “The tall 
pyramids of meringues and macaroons, the spun-candy 
edifices that distinguished our banquet tables in days 
earlier than you know of, our sauces and our forty 
soups, are not all of high living we brought with us 
to the social life we came into; as Lucy Routt once 
assured me they were. Nor yet our cellars- of old 
sherry, sauternes and clarets, and our rich cordials; 
nor our iron balconies, our frescoed ceilings and pan- 


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eled walls, our chandeliers, mirrors and sconces. Re- 
peat these enumerations to Lucy Routt, if you will.” 

The old nun had all the manner now, with its smil- 
ing insouciance, and also its charm, of a woman of the 
great world. “We brought with us other things too* 
my dear. A grace, a spirit, a culture, yes; and a 
refinement that has lingered wherever we have* been 
in any degree, a factor. Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. 
Louis, Louisville, New Orleans, Charleston with its 
strain of Huguenot, bear witness to what I say. These 
among our American cities have a charm, a social 
tradition, a grace of living, that lingers. 

“This* region about us here was a center, at its start, 
of French emigre colonization. The very landscape 
still seems to partake something of the serene loveli- 
ness of the France I learned to know when as a young 
woman I was taken there by my father; even as our 
dwellings and our churches hereabout show the French 
influence in their architecture.” 

The notes of a bell, low-toned and softly pealing, 
came through the open windows on the air now grown 
mellow with evening. 

The mother arose. One realized with surprise that 
she was short and rather stout, not tall. 

“The girls of the school will be assembling, Lucy, 
and I would like you to come with me and see them. 
Some come to us as early as six years old. The dear 
Lord for reasons of His own always permits some to 
be left motherless. The most are around eighteen 
when they leave us. In two days now they all go home 
for the summer vacation. 

“Stephen, get yourself a book from the bookcase 
yonder. Oh, he’ll find considerable that’s modern, 
Lucy. Just as in the roll of our teachers, more than 


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one name, Sister Teresa, Sister Catherine, Sister 
Bridget, is followed by a B. A., or a B. S.” 

She spoke again to Stephen. “I shall take Lucy from 
chapel to see the garden. Sister Veronica then is com- 
ing with some of our late strawberries for you both, 
and a pitcher of our cream, and bread and fresh butter. 
That, Lucy, is what Stephen loved for his supper when 
he was a little fellow, and spent one week of every 
summer with me here during the vacation. And a 
plate, too, of our clover-honey, wasn’t it, Stephen? 
And a slice of our homemade cheese?” 

Stephen who had risen with the two addressed his 
great-aunt. “When I first met Lucy Wing, it was in 
this room too. She sat here, on this straight-backed, 
wooden-bottomed chair, beneath sweet Saint Geneveva 
and her halo, and her babe, and her mild-eyed succor- 
ing doe. An intimidating young person, she looked me 
over without enthusiasm, out of large, round eyes. She 
had impeccable black curls, and as you, ma’am, will 
agree, the cheeks of the young ladies on the covers of 
the fifteen-cent magazines, are not more highly colored 
than were her own. She never melted; never faltered; 
never relented in her gaze turned on me. I think I 
must have accepted then, the challenge in that gaze. 
I want you to know, Aunt Philippa, I have taken it 
up anew.” 


CHAPTER X 



UCY stood with Mother Mary Gertrude at one 


side of the chapel doorway, and watched the 


school pass in. Two and two they came, the 
youngest pupils first, the procession ending with the 
oldest girls. The line, as it passed, glanced at Lucy, 
and as quickly withdrew* its eyes. 

Following behind her companion in her flowing 
heavy robes of black, her veil floating lightly behind 
her, Lucy entered the chapel at the end of the pro- 
cession, and took her place beside the mother on a 
bench. The young voices, clear and high, lifted in a 
hymn. 

A myriad thoughts, comprehensions, and points of 
view, came upon Lucy. She hitherto had thought of 
her Aunt Philippa with a sense of wonder and pity. 
That a personality so vigorous, should find its destiny 
in immurement, only had befogged her. The school 
of which she thought rarely, and never as a factor in 
her Aunt Philippa’s life, meant to her confining walls, 
bare floors, pupils in uniforms cut to a pattern, with 
downcast eyes which to her, suggested hypocrisy. The 
whole had seemed drab and inadequate. 

To her newer comprehension, these young girls gath- 
ered here from various sections, were the vehicles for 
an idea. Each of these young women as she left this 
school, was in symbol, the bearer of a symbolic flame, 
of which the home was to be the temple ; and this young 


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woman, the priestess. Lucy was overcome by the pro- 
foundness of the idea. 

****** 

She followed Mother Gertrude along a path which 
stretched ahead, the length of the garden. When had 
she seen so many well-nigh forgotten, homely flowers? 
Four-o’clock, bleeding heart, touch-me-not, cockscomb; 
fuchsia, tuberose, lemon verbena, heliotrope; in beds 
and borders. Flowers and ideas then, discarded else- 
where, were cherished here? Were they a survival? 
Or were they a reserve ? 

The branches of some cherry trees overhung the 
garden wall, which was of brick, and grown with ivy. 
The varnished fruit with which the trees were laden, 
gleamed amid the leaves, crimson-black, scarlet, and 
waxy-white, according to the variety. There was a 
rockery midway of the flower beds, a finger of water 
trickling over the stones; and at the end of the walk, 
there was a summer house. 

Mother Gertrude left Lucy to go and speak to a 
man at work among the flowers; an old man with a 
stubby reddish-gray beard. 

These things on which Lucy gazed as she waited, 
she saw as things she knew, the verifications of her 
earlier impressions. That they existed, this garden, 
the wide grounds, the surrounding great farm; the 
group of buildings; the barns, stables, and dairy; that 
these were here, the outer shell of an active and ener- 
gizing idea, this was new and arresting! 

Her Aunt Philippa, and the gardener, were speak- 
ing in French. The man, as Lucy here recalled, was 
an Alsatian who had come to America in the ’70’s, 
and had been in the employ of the school ever since. 

Many strains, and many leavens, then, enter into the 


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making of this great southland of hers! Lucy was 
prone to think of one strain only, as belonging to those 
pioneer days of the start. Her mind ran back always 
to that one of her own forbears, old John Henry 
Wing, the Indian fighter. He, under General Evan 
Shelby, in a company of Kentucky backwoodsmen re- 
nowned for expert marksmanship, at the battle of Point 
Pleasant, at the mouth of the Great Kanawha', where 
Chief Cornstalk, the ally of the British, was killed, 
and his forces of the northwest Indians were routed, 
fought, and won, the first battle of the American Revo - 
lution. Or so she had been taught by Colonel Tecum- 
seh Craig, to believe. 

Or she thought of another John Henry Wing, the 
son of the first John; who in another company of Ken- 
tucky backwoodsmen, marched against, and routed, 
Chief Tecumseh, a brother of Chief Cornstalk, at 
Detroit, in 1812 — the grandfather of Colonel Tecum- 
seh, being one of this company of Kentuckians; and 
the grandson bearing the great chief’s name. 

On Lucy’s every hand at this present moment, was a 
potent and still virile French survival ! She turned and 
followed her old friend, the Aunt Philippa of her child- 
hood, back between the flower beds, towards the group 
of buildings. 

****** 

The two, Lucy and Stephen, left the convent gates 
in the lingering afterglow. In time they turned off 
the old highway into a less traveled road, which 
carried them across country, to the pike leading to 
Ashe. 

It was a narrow thoroughfare, shut in by trees, and 
bordered now with ferny, grassy banks, and again with 
wayside weeds and bloom. These already damp with 


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the approaching night, gave out a cool and aromatic 
odor. When the car passed a culvert, or rushed over 
a railless bridge that spanned one of the innumerable 
small rills, the low ground sent up the fragrance of 
mint. Speeding on through the gathering dusk, the two 
were aware, each of them, that as life’s superlative 
moments are counted, these hours they were sharing, 
were golden. 

As they reached the end of the day’s journeying for 
Lucy, the electric light upon the porch was switched on, 
and Mrs. Wing stood at the top of the steps. Sharp- 
featured in the revealing light, tiny, with her darting 
keen gaze, she suggested some wee, but fierce old hawk, 
welcoming this nestling whose return to the nest she 
awaited. 

At the sight of the tiny old figure, and in the light 
of Lucy’s recent fuller knowledge of her grandmother’s 
earlier cheated life, a thousand confirming testimonies 
of the past rushed on the girl. A thousand yearning 
and aching emotions overcame her, born of kinship and 
affection, of the sweetness of long dependence, of the 
attitude of child for parent. She knew the arrogance 
within this old heart, and long had grasped some of 
the bitterness there. It was as though out of the wide 
and ample horizon of the start, there stretched an ever- 
narrowing road, the thousand rays of the start, center- 
ing at the close, on a single object, and this herself, 
the great-grandchild. 

***** * 

Lucy joined her grandmother at the interrupted 
dinner table. Miss Kitty McKane, bleached and 
rouged and powdered, draped with chain and lorgnon, 
and wearing a dress with the Paris stamp, made one 
of the three about the table. Whatever Lucy had to 


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say, was said, at all times, and without hesitation, be- 
fore her. 

“Grandmother, why did Aunt Philippa take orders? 
The Janviers apparently look upon themselves as a 
big part, if not the whole thing, in the Episcopal 
diocese. She says she’s been for forty-nine years at 
the school of Our Lady.” 

Mrs. Wing looked up. She was eating her habitual 
evening meal, whatever the variety prepared for others 
at her table: crusty French bread broken into milk, 
rich and yellow, partaken from a silver bowl. On the 
thin-worn bright old bowl, was the well-nigh obliter- 
ated coat-of-arms of the Calverts of colonial Maryland. 
This one bit of old silver linked Mrs. Wing with her 
own forbears, and she greatly prized and cherished it. 

She answered the question. “In Washington, 
not many blocks from the school you attended for 
four years, is a statue of a Union general. It’s entirely 
an atrocious thing, all epaulets, and buttons, and male 
vanity. You passed it many times. It’s your answer. 
Philippa and her people were damnable rebels. She 
would not marry a man bearing arms against her blood. 
A year after the break between the two, about the time 
of Bull Run, he married a northern woman with a for- 
tune. The termination of the affair drove Philippa, on 
the contrary, back to the school where as a girl, she 
was sent for her French and music. Does it occur to 
you, Lucy, how few were the vocations or avocations, 
offered a single woman of family, prior to the ’70’s? 
You have the story. There’s nothing good ever came 
of war, nothing good ever will, and women always are 
the chief sufferers.” 

****** 

Stephen outstretched on a wicker couch within a 


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screened porch open to the starlit night was talking 
with his mother. She, at his command, was in a chair 
beside him, his outstretched hand holding hers. 

“Aunt Philippa rode her high horse this afternoon 
in great style, Port Royal, and all that. Mummy, 
she’s a great old girl. It does get under the skin and 
tingle the blood, to consider a lifetime given to an end 
believed in.” 

“Your Aunt Philippa, Stephen, is one of the un- 
recognized big women of her time. The south has had 
its full share of these. I like to think of such women, 
and of their influence, silent, steady, still, productive, 
like growth. We need these; need more of them than 
we have, often I think.” 

The son drew the hand he held, to his lips. He 
loved this not always vocal parent, deeply and ardently. 
Helen went on. 

“Has it occurred to you, big son, that the largely un- 
sung women of the south during the Civil War did 
more than clothe and feed the army of the Confeder- 
acy? We were short in man-power from the start, and 
the women left at home, perforce were the adminis- 
trators. Have you realized that when the men of the 
south returned to the farms and the plantations after 
the surrender at Richmond, they found these women, 
who, bereft of authority over the negroes yet were sur- 
rounded with a population of them, nonproductive and 
dependent, who must eat and exist, had instituted 
a system for the cultivation of the land in small parcels, 
and on shares? Which in despite of the destructive 
work of the horrors of reconstruction, is the working 
system of the agricultural south to-day?” 

“The wise parent that it is! Herself one of the 
silent, stilly ones! Neither a follower, nor a leader 


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she, in these present, yeasty, restless feminine days. 
But just — oh, so comfortably for those around her — 
beautifully and graciously content to be ! Lean nearer 
to me, Mummy, closer a bit, and I’ll kiss you.” 

“How does the lovely girl wear, son? Lucy, I mean. 
For she. is — oh, my dear — she truly is lovely to look 
on.” 

Stephen sat up. Helen heard the quick indrawing 
of his breath. 

“She’s an entity, mother. She’s something, and she’s 
somebody. I’m overwhelmed with the temerity of my- 
self in setting to win her. I am, oh, I am, Mummy, and 
yet I’ve just this to do. What a woman she is to make ! 
In the years ahead what a creature she’ll be. She’s 
feeling her way now. She’s looking all about her. 
When the time comes for her to shine in the fullness 
of her conscious power, it will be with her own distinct 
brilliancy.” 

A silence followed, intimate and profound. Then, 

“Mummy?” 

“Yes?” 

“There’s an elderly colored woman at Mrs. Wing’s, 
unmistakably a personage, by name Ellen Jackson. 
Her brother is Jerry Jackson, our one-time gardener.” 

“Yes?” 

“What is it that’s evading me? What ought I to 
know about these two? Is there any story?” 

“There are two stories. Your cousin Tecumseh, ac- 
cording to one story, says their mother was brought to 
Jekyl’s Island from Africa, as late as ’49. He tells 
this only because it gives an opportunity to add that a 
private yacht owned by a northern man brought the 
cargo over. It’s a hark-back to things we of this 
generation would like to forget.” 


io8 


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“What’s the other story? There’s no echo to this 
one in my mind.” 

“The second story includes Miss Kitty McKane, and 
also sheds light on one of the many sides to Mrs. Wing. 
As a source for anecdote and local color alone, she’s a 
benefaction to her community.” Helen smiled. 

“Here it is as told me when I came here. She, as 
you know, was a violent Unionist. Kentucky was 
divided in its allegiance. It was her boast that for 
every man of her Kentucky connection by blood or by 
marriage, who entered the southern army, she would 
send a recruit into the Union army. The day her hus- 
band, and with him, her son, her only child, put on 
the Confederate gray, she made good her boast by 
pairing them. 

“The road house at the crossroads at that 
time was run by an Irishman, newly come over, 
by name Michael McKane. He was a widower, with 
two little daughters, Kitty and Rosaleen. He ran the 
road house, and looked after his two children, with 
the aid of two negro servants he owned, man and wife, 
the parents of your Ellen and Jerry Jackson, and of 
a younger child named ’Celie. 

“What Mrs. Wing’s methods of persuasion were, 
nobody knew. But the day that McKane and his negro 
man joined the Union army, the two daughters of 
McKane, who was a Roman Catholic, were entered 
by Mrs. Wing at the school of Our Lady, where you’ve 
been this afternoon. And the negro woman and her 
three children went to live in a cabin on the Wing 
farm. Kitty, the eldest of the McKane children, had 
the name of being a fine girl. The story went that she 
faced Mrs. Wing, on the day her father left, and with 
the terrible frankness of childhood, asked her if she 


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109 


was God, that she dared make widows and orphans? 

“McKane was killed at Chancellorsville. And 
whatever the fate of the father of Ellen and Jerry and 
’Celie, he never returned to his family. When the news 
came of the death of McKane, Mrs. Wing drove the 
forty miles to the school, and begged the pardon of 
Kitty McKane. 

“Whatever her faults, she never minimized her ob- 
ligations in these two instances. She made Kitty. She 
had her taught expert needlework, and built up a 
clientele for her as a young seamstress. Later she 
bought out the business of Madame Leroy, and put 
Kitty at the head of it, and let her gradually take it 
over. Rosaleen, the younger child, found her own 
vocation. She is little Sister Veronica, the portress at 
Our Lady. 

“In the other instance, she took Ellen, the oldest of 
the three negro children, into her own house. Long her 
personal attendant, her position a peculiar and a fav- 
ored one, Ellen has traveled pretty much over the 
world. Jerry, the boy, came here to your grandfather 
and got his training. How it came about we never 
knew. ’Celie, the third child, married. Julius Buck, 
your ragtime genius at the big drum, is one of her 
children. ’Celie herself is dead. I’m exhausted. 
Volubility’s not my line.” 


CHAPTER XI 


O N a morning toward the end of June, Helen 
Janvier came downstairs to breakfast, with 
reason to know that her son had preceded her. 
She smiled, loving to hear him as now, while he waited 
for her to appear, strum the piano. That he loved 
music, did not prevent his performance on the key- 
board, like his singing, from being poor. 

The piano was in the living room which opened off 
the hall. From his place on the music bench he could 
see the stairway. He rose, and came to meet her. 

On every hand was a predominance of ivory-toned 
woodwork and gay chintzes. Glass doors at the rear 
of the hall looked on Helen’s flower garden. The 
dining room was opposite the living room. Visible 
beyond it, was a breakfast room, the table set with 
china, glass, and silver, and a bowl of riotously gay- 
hued foxglove. 

Mother and son as they went in together, his arm 
about her waist, exhaled an air of gayety and cheer, 
like their gay-printed chintzes, and their vistas of walks 
and garden. Both looked fresh and invigorated; she 
exquisitely so, with her smoothly dressed hair and firm 
skin; he aboundingly so. 

She took her place at the head of the table. A maid 
placed fruit plates, and brought in a bowl of big red 
plums. Through the broad windows, their sashes 
open, was a far view of country. 

no 


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hi 


“Mother?” 

“Yes?” 

“I mayn’t be here for dinner. I’m due at Ashe for 
the afternoon, and if I’m pressed in the least to stay, 
why, I’ll stay.” 

He laughed, and she smiled. 

He made no concealment of his condition of ener- 
getic swain. And because Helen never intruded, never 
pressed a right to know, never indeed at any time 
had pressed such a right, he told her all. All that any 
creature tells another, save the one. 

And she listened, smiled, and — suffered. The last, 
he in common with his sex in these matters, never 
suspected. 

How is it that the best women are the perfect dis- 
semblers? Stephen when he came to Helen with his 
raptures and his rhapsodies, never saw that she often 
was quite pale and tired. Never dreamed that there is 
another than the lover’s jealousy; as passionate and as 
sickening; as full of torment, pain, and impotent suf- 
fering; the jealousy suffered by the woman with the 
certain knowledge that she must surrender the son 
she has borne; must concede him to another woman. 

“Mother, what an indefatigable old sport Mrs. Wing 
is. Do you recall the story I told you of a man named 
Eugene Lelewel?” 

“I remember. Did he lose his place at the Weimar 
brewery?” 

“He did. And that’s the point. Since I looked him 
up, and found he was fired, I’ve been seeing a bit of 
him. Truth to tell, I don’t think he wants the place 
back. I could have arranged it. He’s a curious find. 
I went by his house the other evening in my car, and he 
took me with him to a workingman’s club.” 


1 12 


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“Well?” 

“He lives in one of those shabby cross streets, that 
are sure to be hot in summer, and cold in winter. He, 
his wife, and their child, a boy, have the upstairs half 
of a two-story house. Life in the neighborhood seems 
all in the open, every family at its windows or its door, 
except the children who were in the street.” 

“And all this leads where?” 

“Nowhere very much except that the man is unusual, 
and interests me. And to tell you that Mrs. Wing 
demands she meet him. She wrote him a note which 
she gave me to deliver, in appreciation of his act that 
noon at the brewery, and asked him to come and see 
her. The outcome is that he, his wife and son, come to 
Ashe this afternoon on the trolley, and I’m to be of 
the party. I warned Mrs. Wing that she’ll find the 
wife whom I met, less to her mind than the husband. 
But she’d none of it. ‘I find the proletariat interesting 
in any and all of its manifestations,’ she told me tartly; 
‘the true proletariat like the real aristocrat, has the 
courage always to be himself, and herself.’ ” 

Stephen appeared at Ashe that afternoon. The 
Lelewels were arrived ahead of him, and Eugene and 
his son were just then crossing the lawn, to present 
themselves to Mrs. Wing. 

This person was established pleasantly to the eye. 
The day was the hottest thus far of the season, and she 
was settled in her chair, with her footstool and her 
cane, and her three canine friends near by, in the deep 
shade of a catalpa tree to the right of the lawn. 
Ancient and twisted and gnarled of mighty trunk the 
tree was, but hearty; its branches far-flung; a giant of 
its kind, probably unmatched in the state. 


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ii3 


Stephen followed Eugene and the boy across the 
grass. As he reached the group, Lelewel was urging 
his son to put his hand in Mrs. Wing’s extended and 
slightly tremulous one. As the man’s ingenuously 
downy hair was at variance with his keen eyes, so were 
his cheap clothes at odds with his manner, which was 
smiling and at ease. 

“’Umph!” Mrs. Wing dropped the hand of the 
child, and addressed the father. “You better send 
him out to me and let me build him up for a while on 
country milk and country eggs.” 

The boy who was nine years old, as Stephen knew, 
was of a fragile and sensitive appearance. He was 
an odd little fellow on the whole, with a white face 
and a too thin body, his shirt waist of striped pink-and- 
white percale, and his woolen knickerbockers, seem- 
ingly too large for him, and his stockings sagging about 
his meager calves. His eyes in their peculiar gravity 
however — they were gray behind well-defined lashes — 
gave an unforgettable individuality to the face. A 
pronounced gravity it was, as though life thus far had 
left an overtroubled impress upon a sensitive mind. 

“Well, Stephen?” Mrs. Wing extended a hand to 
this person. “Sit down in the cane chair there, and 
make friends with the boy. Mr. Lelewel, I’m indeed 
glad to see you. I’ve wandered about European capi- 
tals for sixty-odd years, and know a cosmopolite when 
I meet one. Thank God, I’ve one to exchange a word 
with this afternoon. These tourist Americans such as 
Stephen here, know as much of European politics as 
they know of government in ancient Thebes.” 

She pointed Eugene to a place beside her, and set- 
tled herself with zest, turning toward the visitor ex- 
pectantly. What she expected from him, or wanted of 


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1 14 


him, she probably could not have said, beyond the fact 
that any variety of human nature was to her worthy of 
her zeal, so that it meant the subjugation of another’s 
personality to her own. 

She turned with something of her old fire on Eugene. 
A lively and consummate flatterer she was, though 
never with her own sex, contemptuous of it as she was 
as a rule, and as a rule as generously hated by this sex. 

“What does this news in the afternoon papers mean, 
young man? What, in your opinion, is back of these 
shots fired from that sidewalk in Sarajevo? Back of 
this killing of the Austrian heir-apparent, and that 
morganatic wife of his? Is the devil to pay in Europe 
as a consequence? Is it a match to the powder maga- 
zine of that always damnable eastern situation? My 
father served his government as a diplomat in eastern 
Europe for fifteen years when I was a girl, and young 
woman. I knew and know, Belgrade, Bucharest, 
Prague, Vienna; I know the Dalmatian coast, and 
Greece. I’ve a right to say that I’m interested. Now 
tell me what you know?” 

Lucy and Mrs. Lelewel who, a moment since, had 
come out of the house together, here approached across 
the grass, accompanied by Stephen who had gone to 
meet them. Lucy, whatever her good will toward the 
visitor with her, plainly was fulfilling her duties awk- 
wardly. One would say that Mrs. Eugene being on 
her hands, she didn’t know what to do with her. 

This person on her part, was openly eager, openly 
curious, her eyes roaming about her without conceal- 
ment. Around twenty-six or seven, one would say, tall, 
deep-bosomed, and free in her carriage, her face was 
made up like a cocotte. An effect which, heightened 
as it was, by long earrings and a picture hat, did not for 


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ii5 


one moment conceal the fact that here, showy and 
eager, petulant and undisciplined, was a child. 

She wore a skirt and coat, the jacket thrown open, 
and a transparent blouse, through which showed the 
lace and ribbons of a showy camisole. One gathered 
that the afternoon had promised much; that the blouse 
which was new, the camisole, and even the picture hat, 
possibly had been purchased for the occasion. One 
gathered also, that Mrs. Lelewel’s alarmed vanity, so 
visibly on the defensive, would be quick to take of- 
fense. 

Lucy in her class sympathies, as in her intellectual 
ones, as yet was narrow. Whereas the older Lucy, spry 
old body, was catholic in her relations. With much 
tartness and directness but little arrogance, except for 
her own class for whom she wagged a caustic tongue, 
she as she herself put it, had been a wanderer about 
the world too long to be impressed by the claims 
of anybody. She surveyed Mrs. Lelewel, and pro- 
ceeded to put her to the fore. 

“As great a traveler, are you, Mrs. Lelewel, as I 
understand your husband is ? Did you come with him 
to America?” 

These seemed humorous suppositions to Mrs. Eu- 
gene. Her laugh, like her manner, was defensive. “I 
guess I’m as good an American as anybody here. ’Gene 
married me ten years this June right out of high school 
in Cincinnati. How about it, ’Gene?” 

’Gene, however, had taken his son by the hand and 
led him to Lucy, who more at ease with the boy than 
with the mother, put out her hand, and spoke. 

“This is the little son you told me of?” Then to 
the boy, “And what is your name?” 

The child who was painfully awkward, pushed for- 


ii 6 


MARCH ON 


ward at this by his father, looked up. A slow-mount- 
ing pink suffused the pallor of his face. 

“My name is Andrey Lelewel,” he said, looking at 
her. Then quite unexpectedly he bowed from his 
waist. It was odd, with a suggestion of foreignness, 
and quaintly pleasing. 

And with this he again gazed at her. Plainly the 
boy was dazed, plainly bewildered, with wonderment 
and a gathering delight, in what he looked on. His 
eyes up-lifted, seemed to say here was the most lovely 
thing their owner ever gazed on. 

And probably it was. Lucy of late, seemed to have 
arrived at the dazzling completeness of her young 
beauty. So happy was she these days, that the nar- 
rowness of her joy before Stephen came into her life, 
frightened her. Rebelling no longer, she from day to 
day, was letting herself be carried forward with the 
resistlessness as of mighty waters. Stephen’s eyes 
seeking hers, a moment since when he came to meet 
her and Mrs. Lelewel, she experienced a sense of in- 
credible happiness. His eyes then sweeping her, he 
had smiled. And she had smiled back. There is no 
joy such as that coming from a knowledge that we 
please. 

As .she stood here now, her eyes, her brows, and her 
hair dark; her skin white, and her color to-day beyond 
compare; a sprig of green leaves that she held in her 
fingers, picked up as she came across the lawn, and 
which gleamed dark and glossy against their whiteness, 
seemed to relate her, as a flower to its setting, to the 
green of the turf and the trees about her. 

Almost one could see Andrey’s little heart beneath 
the pink-and-white shirt waist, beating with its intensity 


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ii7 


as he gazed at her; this thin little boy in his over-large 
clothes; one did see the rapture in his up-lifted face. 

Lucy blushed, who rarely did so ; wearing also a look 
of sweet embarrassment, who rarely was confused. 
It was evident to the group who watched the little scene 
that the girl was touched, even was moved. 

Then since the boy went on gazing at her, she 
stooped, took his hand, and laughingly led him off with 
her across the grass towards the distant flower borders, 
a homely little fellow with heavy and lifeless flaxen 
hair, pointing out to him as they went, the pigeons 
strutting and pecking on the drive. 

Mrs. Lelewel watched them go, then laughed 
shortly. “Will you look at that now! And Andrey 
always holding back from strangers. What do you 
make outer that, ’Gene?” 

Mrs. Wing tapped her footstool with her cane. 
This was her party, and as such she regarded herself as 
its center. The attention thus brought back to herself, 
her gaze went from the husband to the wife, and back 
to the husband. 

“While my granddaughter’s gone, I want to say to 
you both, that I’m sorry it should be through kindness 
to Mrs. Janvier and my child, that you lost your place 
at the brewery. May I say further that I’m worried, 
and very much would like to know how you’re getting 
on?” 

Mrs. Eugene, bold and yet childlike in her alarmed 
self-esteem, glanced at Stephen. Finding his gaze rest- 
ing on her, in just what sense she wasn’t quite sure, she 
bridled, and her attention came back to her husband 
and Mrs. Wing petulantly. 

Good humor on the contrary, was Eugene’s suit. 


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1 18 


His white teeth flashed as he replied. “Why, yes, you 
may ask, and I’m glad to answer. The reply, however, 
depends on what your term ‘ getting on* conveys to the 
mind. It doesn’t greatly matter for me, as an indi- 
vidual, to be out of a job. I’m taken care of in that 
event, until I get another. We’re sent from country 
to country, you’ll find us nowadays everywhere, mod- 
ern missionaries, preaching industrial Christianity. As 
for your term ‘getting on,’ my group only consider a 
man’s getting on, when he rises with, not above, his fel- 
low creatures. ‘Getting on,’ with us, refers to the gen- 
eral condition, not the individual.” 

Mrs. Eugene flounced in her chair, and as she spoke 
to Stephen, her earrings swung. Her skin was very 
white beneath the innocent rouging, and her hair seen 
beneath the hat, was russet-red. 

“My Lord, he’s off again. How’d you like to be 
tied to some’n’ like that? Every time any girl I know, 
here or up in Cincinnati, gets goin’ with a feller, I say 
to her, ‘Jus’ you make right sure before you subscribe 
to any more installments of this love story, darling, 
just what sort of a bug-idea chappie dear expects to 
keep in the house for a lodger.’ I was a kid goin’ to 
high school when ’Gene came to board with us, and it 
all looked good then to me.” 

She wore cheap slippers of patent leather, with high 
heels, and finished with metal buckles. Having poked 
with a pointed toe at first one and then another dog as 
they lay dozing on the grass in front of her, she flung 
herself back again in her chair, and the discontent in 
her face deepened. 

Mrs. Wing, when Eugene paused, on the contrary 
gave a snort, spirited old war horse, straightened her 
cap, and prepared to enjoy herself, remarking that it 


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119 


doesn’t imply alignment with the man on the other 
side of the fence to listen to him. One suspected that 
it was insurgency in general and in itself, this old sinner 
loved; the individual and his line of rebellion, having 
little to do with it. 

“How’d you get to this stand of yours, Eugene 
Lelewel? I’d like to hear. Where’d you come from? 
How’d you get here? To our little-town metropolis 
that we in America call a city. I hear that you don’t 
approve of us Americans ? Hey? Nor of our form in 
government that you find over here ?” 

He laughed softly. It was plain to see that the old 
creature with her myriad crow’s-feet, and her million 
fine wrinkles, pleased the man mightily. As, indeed, 
when she set herself so to do, she in her day had 
pleased and titillated many another of more difficult 
approach than this young labor agitator. 

“For me,” Eugene told her amiably, “existing gov- 
ernments wherever found, are bankrupt. I’m thirty- 
four years old, and long since I gave up hope of getting 
what my class want, out of any government as now 
operating. I’m building towards a future which pre- 
cludes any privileged class from achieving its purpose 
through government any longer.” 

Lucy and Andrey, returning across the grass, again 
joined the group beneath the tree. The boy carried, 
cupped in his arm, and eclipsing his pink-and-white 
waist, a huge bunch of flowers, white phlox, blue del- 
phinium, rose and lemon snapdragon, pink and white 
pyrethrum, mauve and white canterbury bell, upon 
which he gazed delightedly. 

Lucy had not gathered these varieties in blossoms 
and colors for him, whatever may have been her pur- 
pose. Life as it moved here on her grandmother’s 


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place, by no means was so simple as this. Jerry Jack- 
son from some point of vantage, had seen Lucy and the 
boy making for the flower borders, and reached the 
spot before they did, producing from the pocket of his 
overalls as he arrived, a pair of flower-shears. A 
gardener of spirit, and jealous of his prerogatives, 
accustomed to long periods of absence on the part of his 
employer, he allowed no one to break a flower stem 
without supervision by himself, if he could forestall it. 

Eugene arose and met his son. “Come with me and 
tell Mrs. Wing who, and what you are, Andrey. Give 
me your flowers, and go and recite your credentials.” 

Andrey surrendered his bouquet, and walked across 
the circle to Mrs. Wing. Lifting his head on its over- 
thin small neck, he raised his hand. 

U I am a citizen of the world , and a little brother of 
mankind ” 

Eugene looked pleased. “Suppose, Andrey, when 
you and I go over to France on a mission as delegate 
this autumn, as we expect to do, Jean Francois has no 
English? How will you declare yourself to him?” 

“Je suis un citoyen du monde entier , et petit frere du 
genre humain. ,} 

“And suppose again, when we run down to Milan 
from Paris, to the congress that convenes there a fort-> 
night later, Beppino has no English, and no French. 
What then?” 

“Sono cittadino del mondo, epiccolo fratellino del P 
umanita” 

“And after you and I reach Madrid for the confer- 
ence there?” 

“Soy ciudadano del mundo f y hermanite de la hu - 
manidad. ,> 

Mrs. Lelewel had been sitting unregarded and over- 


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I 2 I 


looked, as she evidently considered it, for as long as 
her mounting fury could endure it. She burst forth to 
Stephen beside her, and then to the group at large. 

“Don’t it get you? Ain’t it just fierce, what’s he 
doing with that child? Do you reckon anything I say 
about it goes? Or that I’m counted in on that trip he’s 
talkin’ about? Guess again. Has he ever let me go 
on these trips with him? None for me. When he 
comes home from his work late afternoons, and meets 
Andrey on the sidewalk with his roller skates with the 
other children, does he leave him be? He takes him 
with him to the reading rooms; or to Marx Hall; or 
to the bowling alleys where he’s goin’ to find the 
crowd; and shows him off like he’s doing now. D’you 
want to know where ’Gene’s spare time goes? He’s 
working on what he calls a catechism for workingmen’s 
children, questions and answers in all the languages. 
He looks to getting it printed when he gets over to 
Geneva.” 

Eugene made his own smiling addenda to this state- 
ment from his angry wife. “Through means such as 
this catechism, among other ways, Andrey and I look 
to see the partitions come down, and one people be 
made of the children throughout the world.” 


CHAPTER XII 


M RS. WING spoke dryly to Eugene. “How am 
I asked to regard the performance of your 
boy? As the exhibition of an automaton, or 
of a thinking creature?’’ 

One grasped that Eugene was eagerly proud of the 
child. “Ah, but you must know Andrey to judge 
him! You see him quiet and shy. He’s the reverse. 
He’s thoughtful, yes; but also he’s passionate, knowing 
his mind, and desiring it. Hearing his mother read 
from the paper last night that showers for to-day were 
possible, he snatched the page from her and trampled 
on it. He wanted to come this afternoon, you see.” 

Andrey had taken his flowers from his father and 
carried them to a chair, where he stood beside them, 
lifting them stalk by stalk, and rearranging them. 

Mrs. Wing ( to Eugene ). — Explain your purpose in all 
this? This folderol with the boy for one thing. 
At eighty-eight I find myself, for all my hopes, my 
creeds, and my desires, but the outcome of the depths 
and shallows, the virtues and the defects of my time. 
Assure me if you can, that you’ll be anything more 
in your turn?” 

Eugene (he shrugged his shoulders). — You stand for 
the old order; merely asking of it, as I understand 
you do, that it extend its offices to your sex also. 
Well, I don’t. I Jive for one purpose, that in time 
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123 


the great producing classes shall be the governing 
class. 

Mrs. Wing nodded to Stephen, then with her cane 
pointed to a tray on the table. He handed the tray to 
Eugene, who took a cigarette, held out his fingers for 
a match, and went on talking. 

Eugene. — And I’m not alone. The .movement among 
workingmen of similar discontent the world over to 
repudiate existing governments, is widespread, and 
the consequences when they come, are likely to be 
extensive. I probably will not see them. As I said, 
I’m thirty-four years old. Only a cataclysm can bring 
about in this generation, such changes as my class 
have in mind. It’s possible Andrey won’t see these 
changes. But Andrey’s children will. It lies in 
accustoming the mind to the idea, through the chil- 
dren of the proletariat the world over. This is my 
answer about this folderol with Andrey. 

He struck a match on the match-stand, leaning for- 
ward to the table to do so, lit his cigarette, and went on 
talking. 

Eugene. — You asked me, Mrs. Wing, what’s back 
of this assassination in Servia. I don’t know. 
Frankly I hope it’s no ill-directed move from any of 
my brethren over there. We’ve a vast educational 
work to do before we’re ready for the match to be 
laid to the powder. We want constructive revolu- 
tion in time, but first we need universal proletariat 
preparation. If any one’s responsible for this mur- 
der other than the fanatic individual perpetrator, 
it’s more likely at this stage of the game to be capital 
hiding behind militarism. The working classes of 


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Europe are so open in their present moods of dis- 
content, capital would welcome a European war to 
divert the general mind.” 

The eyes of the group, Eugene included, here were 
drawn to Andrey. The boy had left his flowers on 
the chair, and going to Lucy’s side where she sat in a 
rustic chair, was standing at her knee, and gazing at her. 

Her consciousness of the nearness of Stephen 
again was absorbing her; filling her thoughts, and ren- 
dering her a bit obtuse to things about her. There is a 
beauty which is a reflex from the soul. As the glow of 
a jewel comes from within, the fire of an opal, the luster 
of a pearl, so the light in her face at the moment was 
a beauty apart from the harmony of the features, being 
a radiance of the soul. Andrey drawn irresistibly to 
gaze at her, pressed against her knee. 

Again she put out a hand to him. He touched it 
this time with his fingers, then with a sudden rapture of 
adoration, seized it and laid his cheek against it. It 
was homage; the child’s tribute to the compelling things 
of the .soul; as beautiful as it was unpremeditated, and 
involuntary. If Andrey had looked up, he would have 
seen a startled sweetness, new to the girl’s face, and in 
her dark eyes, sudden swimming tears. 

Perhaps he did see them. For the rest of the after- 
noon he moved with her, never more than a foot from 
her side. 

Eugene’s eyes came back from their survey of Lucy. 
The impress of her upon his consciousness seemed an- 
swerable for the new direction of his thoughts. He 
laughed outright. 

Eugene. — I’m going to put a situation to you, Mrs. 


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I2£ 


Wing. I met Miss Wing, your granddaughter, and 
her companion, Mrs. Janvier, on their way to the 
polls. I learned that Mrs. Janvier was there to fight 
the machine that controls the city’s policies. God 
knows, I said to myself, this lady’s zeal must be cal- 
culated to make her husband, Mr. Stephen Janvier, 
senior, feel some little like a fool. Except that he 
has good company; the most of his group having 
wives in this fight, and each man of them tarred with 
the same brush. 

He looked across at Stephen, who from his chair be- 
side Mrs. Lelewel, was listening. 

Eugene. — Shall I continue? 

Stephen. — W hy not? 

Eugene. — With your permission. Your uncle, Mr. 
Janvier, corporation lawyer and capitalist, is not a 
little interested in at least two of the public utilities. 
He and certain of his associates, are interested in 
still other public-serving properties which have a 
good deal to do in dictating who shall be chosen to 
govern the city. The mayors of your city for a good 
many years have been the preferred candidates of 
these same controlling business interests of the city. 
How then, and this is what I wanted to ask these two 
ladies that morning three weeks ago, have your 
schools reached such a downward state? And why 
were these ladies so indignant? Is it possible that 
they in their eagerness to take up new duties, do not 
know who it is they’re fighting? 

Eugene (flinging away his cigarette , and looking 
straight at Stephen ). — I may ask you what I couldn’t 
put to Mrs. Stephen Janvier. Which is this: Caa 


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you, and do you, ask me to believe that Mr. Janvier 
and his group care a rap really for the common wel- 
fare? A coterie of men notoriously concerned with 
their individual enrichment, rather than with the city 
which they’re bleeding. You people here have had a 
rule by public-utility owners for forty years. What 
sort of a city, including schools, have they given 
you? 

Mrs. Wing ( who it was evident was enjoying herself 
for the moment hugely). — Young man, are you about 
to disclose to me after all this time of wondering, 
who it was a few years since, ran gas stock down 
with a bang? By which I lost more dollars than I 
care to remember? 

Eugene (flinging hack a smile). — Do you really care 
to know, Mrs. Wing, since you asked me this, how 
I happen to be in America ? Some years ago one of 
your magazines published a series of articles on the 
shamelessness of your municipal governments. 
These exposures showed us across the world, a field 
here in America, amazingly ready for our creed of 
discontent to take root in, and put forth. 

Mrs. Wing seeing that he had finished, relaxed her 
gaze, and also her body; jerked her cap straight, and 
leaning back in her chair, gave a whiff of impatience, 
not to say derision. Then she laughed mightily. 

Mrs. Wing. — It’s a fearful place according to your 
defining, young man, the Great Babylon, America, 
and its leading citizens. When you know it as I at 
eighty-eight, think I do, who judge the whole by the 
average, you’ll find much of what you’re claiming, 
simply isn’t true. Half-truths never are. 


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Which also meant that Mrs. Wing, having squeezed 
the juice of novelty from the present occasion and got- 
ten what she wanted, now was tired; a fickleness in 
temper that is by no means uncommon with her type. 
She glanced towards the house. Now that the visit 
was over so far as she was concerned, it was well to 
have it over. She was tired of the Lelewels. She’d 
shoo the whole posse comitatus away after she’d had 
her milk-punch, sending them to see the garden, and on 
to the orchard to help themselves to June apples and 
ripe plums ; and herself take a nap. 

“Here is Miss Kitty McKane, I see,” she announced; 
“bringing Tom, and Ellen Jackson. Mrs. Lelewel, 
let somebody bring your chair here by me, while we 
have our — what is it we’re to have, Lucy?” 

Lucy aroused to what was going on. Her grand* 
mother was implying that Mrs. Lelewel was having a 
dreary time. Angry with herself that she, drifting 
in a maze and a dream, should lose herself in the 
face of her duties, she rose, as Miss Kitty and her force 
of two, arrived with their trays and glasses. 

The face of Mrs. Eugene, flushed beneath the paint, 
was resentful. The afternoon had promised much, 
and the disappointment was biting deep. Lucy went 
to her. Whereupon she, poor vain girl, thrust her 
shoulder about with an excluding gesture, crude and 
passionate, as an ill-tempered child will do towards 
the object of its disfavor. Her words incoherent and 
furious, were directed to Stephen, the only ally she 
seemed to feel she had made during the afternoon, but 
reached them all. 

“Above such visitors as we are, she is. Quite some 
apart, she let’s us know. Keeps to herself, smiling and 


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looking on. Oh, I could hate her! Maybe I do! 
Comes the time, maybe I will!” 

Her husband with the others heard. His rejoinder 
was prompt. “Don’t be a fool, Lyda; or if that’s too 
much to ask of you, don’t be a bigger one than you have 
to be.” 

A small thing all this, it might appear; its start the 
seeming slight of one woman by another. But women 
since the beginning of time have paid for such in- 
variably. 

****** 

Mrs. Wing, with Mrs. Eugene now installed beside 
her, sipped her milk-punch. What an ass the man was 
to have saddled himself with such a creature, brainless 
and vulgar ! 

“And what, Mrs. Lelewel, are your feelings about 
these views of your husband? I suppose you think 
with him?” 

The fingers of Mrs. Eugene crushed to fragments 
the sandwich just taken upon her plate. She burst 
forth, the smoldering fury of her resentment in general 
leaping anew* to flame. 

“I think I’m married to a nut; a muff; a fool; a 
talking machine! Since you ask me, I’m just tired. 
I’m come to an end of it for me. Everybody comes 
saying to me, ‘He’s smart ; your husband’s smart!’ 
Why don’t he turn his smartness to account then? 
What’s he got to show for it? My father was ten 
years over from the old country when he owned his 
own shop; and my mother’d had her own home, too, 
but for him dying right then. She’d have had her Ford 
car by now, if he’d lived, her flivver, like half the wives 
I know. What’s a girl to do when like me, she’s tied 
herself to such as I have? All I see for his smartness 


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is that it makes him different. I hate people who’re 
different. Why can’t he be like the husbands of other 
women?” 

The tall glass stood unregarded on the table by her. 
She took a proffered cake, and crushed it beside the 
sandwich already there. 

‘‘Look at Andrey, and what ’Gene’s doin’ to him! 
Why can’t he let Andrey be! But no; he’s set on 
making him different , too. And I tell you again, and 
I’ve told him, I’m one of those who hate people, and 
hate things, that’re different!” 

* <***** 

Henry, the chauffeur, and the car, were at the door 
to take the Lelewels to the station. Andrey suddenly 
flung himself upon Lucy, whose side up to this moment 
he had not left, clinging to her with both thin hands. 
When his father tried to remove him, he struggled; 
burst into passionate tears; and when forced to yield to 
the other’s superior force, refused to be pacified. 

The meager little body was so shaken by the force 
of his passionate sobbing, that Lucy went to him; put- 
ting her arm about him where he stood, and with her 
handkerchief, wiping the poor, excited little face, hot 
and tear-stained. 

His father interpreted his words, broken as these 
were between his sobs and his hiccoughs. 

“He says that he’ll never see you again, Miss 
Wing.” 

Ellen Jackson was carrying the child’s flowers, and 
Stephen had in his hand a basket of the apples and 
plums that Miss Kitty had provided for him. 

His mother, her earrings swinging, jerked the boy 
from within Lucy’s encircling arm, and pushed him 
ahead of her toward the car. 


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“What do you reckon’ll be the difference to any of 
’em here , if you never do see ’em again?” 

****** 
Andrey was wrong. He saw Lucy several times in 
near succession. At her grandmother’s suggestion she 
went by the home of the Lelewels in the car two days 
later, and left a basket of Jerry’s vegetables. Again 
she took them fruit. And still again she went by with 
eggs, and cream, and butter. On a subsequent Sunday 
afternoon, the boy came out again to Ashe, this time 
with his father only. One gathered that these succes- 
sive points of contact bit deep into the brooding child’s 
sensitive mind. 

****** 

These events, however, belong to the days following. 
As Lucy turned away from the departing car which 
bore the Lelewels, Andrey all too quickly was forgot- 
ten. Stephen was there, and their eyes met. 

She, conscious of happiness as one is conscious of the 
warmth from the sun in early springtime, had a sudden 
knowledge that should her soul, too freighted as it 
was by nature with reserve, ever lift itself into the high 
heavens of sheer joy, this Stephen here beside her, 
would be its wings. In the warmth of his courage, 
and beneath the caress of his presence, she began to 
see that she would dare anything. 

****** 

Mrs. Wing and Miss Kitty, from their chairs be- 
neath the catalpa, watched Lucy and Stephen returning 
across the grass to them. A faint rose lingered in the 
west behind the house, and repeated itself in the sky 
overhead. Elsewhere gathered the purple-indigo of 
coming dusk. The air as though languid after the heat 


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of the day, was motionless; the birds were silent; not a 
leaf stirred. 

How is it with a woman who herself once was im- 
perious and compelling, as she looks on young lovers? 
Does her heart recall how it was when it, too, was 
young ancf eager, was passionate with emotions? 

Mrs. Wing had had her nap ; her milk punch with its 
generous quota of fine old Bourbon had preceded the 
nap; she was refreshed and invigorated. Yet at this 
moment as the two young people came toward her, her 
hand went out to Kitty in a gesture of piteous entreaty. 

There were encroaching crow’s-feet about Miss 
Kitty’s own eyes; the paint and the white on her face 
were almost as with the. clown in the circus ; but taking 
her as she was, she was one of the few persons in this 
world who successfully held, and had held, her own 
with Mrs. Wing. Having faced her first when she 
was a girl of fourteen, she had continued to speak the 
truth as she saw it. She had had hard school teachers 
early. Orphanhood, dependence, and the early neces- 
sity for self-control, are stern mentors. Through their 
discipline she long had learned strength. And Mrs. 
Wing clung to her because of it. 

“Kitty, stay here at Ashe with me the while longer; 
watch over me ; be good to me ; keep me alive that I may 
see the final coming together of these two; until I wit- 
ness this dearest wish of my heart consummated!” 

They heard Lucy laugh; a radiant laugh, sponta- 
neous and felicitous ; she who too rarely laughed. Mrs. 
Wing was triumphant. 

“Ah, Kitty, Kitty, listen to that ! Listen to it ! The 
thing most needed in life by my child, she will find 
through this Stephen that I discovered for her: the 


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courage to take happiness where happiness is! Com- 
mend me, Kitty, commend me, if but for this once, for 
a wise woman!” 

* ***** 

Mrs. Wing pushed aside the footstool from beneath 
her feet. “Pick up my cane, Stephen, and lend me 
your arm. I’ll make a start on the journey back to the 
house.” 

She arose with his aid, Miss Kitty and Lucy gather- 
ing up from her chair, the one her scarf, the other her 
pillow, and the start was made. It was plain to see 
that she doted on this young man. A woman of her 
especial world that arrogates to itself what it wants, 
she could be as selfish and crafty as any other creature 
in it. But for this young man she had more than any 
penchant; any fancy; for him she had a deep and a 
growing ardor. There were not many sweet resting 
places left in the barrenness of her long disillusioned 
fancy. This affection she now felt for this grandson 
and namesake of her early lover; this scion of him who 
still was the passion, and the only one of her life, was 
one of these sweet places. 

“Stephen, your ripple-nosed man, your Eugene 
Lelewel, is interesting, though not in any particular 
original. I’ve met his kind, the student agitator, the 
university-made radical, for years myself on the other 
side.” 

Stephen showed interest. “I’ve been curious to hear 
what you make of him. Except that he’s not so young, 
nor so naive, and possibly is potent where we were 
innocuous, he makes me think of Warrington Adams 
and myself when we — bold and bitter undergraduates 
— were in the running with the radical student group at 
Harvard.” 


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“H’m, but as you’ve just said, he is potent. Your 
man is clever, but whether more than clever, I doubt. 
What matters rather is, that he’s a disturbing sign of 
the times, an indication of the stream of tendency. 
Suppose that a world federation of undergraduates such 
as you just spoke of, were to find themselves with power 
through organization and numbers, to impose their 
will? A federation numbering millions, yet still in the 
throes and vagaries of a mental and moral adolescence, 
out of which manhood’s sound opinion is to be born? 
That is a fair estimate of where the proletariat world 
at large finds itself to-day.” 

Confident and dominant still was this small body, 
this shriveled frame, its hand clutching Stephen’s arm. 
‘‘Let the present world look to it, Stephen; your world. 
Any system that in these times would survive, must 
guarantee a decent and hopeful existence to all par- 
takers in its workings. I saw one system go down; an 
economic system based on slavery. Any system will 
live only so long as it meets the required end. Failing 
to do this, it inevitably perishes. Fifty-odd years ago 
I saw the system which was about me, was become foul 
and cancerous ; and took my stand with the forces that 
would slough the rotten flesh off the infected body of 
the whole. Your grandfather, when he was a young 
man, had a favorite argument. I never admitted at 
the time that it was sound. Now I’m not so sure. At 
the end of the eighteenth century, the revolution of the 
peasants occurred not in Russia, or Prussia, or Austria, 
or Italy, but in France. And why? Because as he 
held, compared with the European common people 
elsewhere, still entirely crushed beneath the burden of 
servitude, the French peasant was better off, and as a 
consequence the more intelligent, and the more ready 


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to resent the political and social privileges of the no- 
bility. Take it for its worth. I never claimed it was 
sound.” 

****** 

That night Stephen, having started for home, reached 
the woodland beyond the osage hedge. Stopping his 
motor, he left his car, and went back to look again at 
the house which sheltered Lucy; that first and last had 
cradled her. 

The lights below stairs were out. He took his way 
to a bench to the right of the house, beneath the purple 
beech, which loomed large, a black mass in the starlit 
darkness. 

He knew which was his darling’s room. A light 
shone there. A shadow went to and fro on the curtain. 
His heart beat tumultuously. 

He and Lucy had spent the evening at the piano 
whereat she fortunately somewhat surpassed him as a 
performer; trying some music sent her by Warrington 
Adams, that arch defender of the modern composer. 
Later they went out to the porch, where the warm dusk 
was punctuated by the stars, and the summer stillness 
by the hootings of a great owl. 

If the girl was lovelier this evening in Stephen’s eyes 
than ever before; if she was more responsive, he as- 
sumed for himself no advantage in these things, nor 
dared take any. 

Say he lost her? Say he failed to make her love 
him? Though not for one moment would he consider 
this ! 

But allowing that he failed. Still would he have her, 
and still would he love her! A passion for a woman 
such as his for Lucy, becomes part of a man, and can- 
not afterward be separated from him. Our great mo- 


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135 


ments in life become part of us; so that we are what 
they with the rest of it, have made us. In this sense 
Lucy was his forever. 

The light in her room went out. The moon rose, 
orange-yellow, above the woodland where he had 
left his car, picking out the brick of the house, lighting 
the lawn and driveway, the shrubberies and the trees. 
In the far borders against these shrubberies, Stephen 
could differentiate certain of the flowers, the holly- 
hocks standing tall, and their blossoms in the light, 
gleaming white. 

Man, not woman, is the true, the incurable romantic. 
Stephen, here on the bench beneath the beech tree, saw 
himself one in the myriad line of man-lovers of woman, 
in recession to Adam in his Eden. And he thanked 
God that it was his to share with these in the common 
lot. 


CHAPTER XIII 


S TEPHEN pressed his advantage in that from day 
to day, he gave Lucy so little time to think. He 
kept the roads to Ashe well-traveled, wasting no 
time, and neglecting no chance. To him it was a glad, 
mad time, and to him it was sweet. The shining days 
so far as it lay with him, were filled. 

“You’re a mad lover, Stephen Janvier,” said Mrs. 
Wing on one occasion; “and, as usual, you’re ahead of 
time. You give my child no breathing spaces.” 

“I’m what every man in love would like to be, I 
say it humbly, ma’am, only the most of us are afraid.” 

Mrs. Wing was sitting on the porch. He dropped 
into a chair. 

“My utterances are meant to sound authoritative and 
final, but do not be deceived, ma’am. I’m no surer at 
bottom than any other man who loves a woman. I am 
in fact most of the time frightened to death. She uses 
me cruelly, Mrs. Wing.” 

“I’ve noticed it,” dryly. 

A figure bending over the handlebars of a bicycle 
came paddling around the drive. It was Lonnie Simp- 
son, Lonnie being short for Alonzo, the son of the 
neighborhood butcher. He was bringing the afternoon 
newspapers for which his father was the local agent. 
Willie, a younger brother of Lonnie, as a rule delivered 
them. 

Lonnie was a local product, fruit of the county grade 

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137 


school, an amiable youth with a milky way of warm- 
hued freckles, and a friendly and ingenuous soul. Like 
Bennie Harlan, the son of the minister, he was Lucy’s 
age, and again like Bennie, appeared greatly younger. 
The three, up to the time Lucy was ten, attended the 
grade school together. 

Dismounting, he let his wheel down, resting it against 
the steps of the porch; then took from the cotton 
bag slung from his shoulders the two papers due this 
household. 

Mrs. Wing approved of neighborhood spirit, and 
identified herself with the village and its interests. 

“What’re you doing on duty this afternoon, Lon- 
nie?” she inquired. “Where’s Willie?” 

Lonnie looked upon Mrs. Wing as individually his 
friend, as did most of the tradespeople in the village, 
though he did not grasp this fact. He, under stress, 
had a fatal propensity for stammering, but he never 
knew himself to stammer with Mrs. Wing. 

“Bud’s gone to town for the ball game. Gee, but 
that kid’s a worse fan even than me !” 

He handed up the papers with a muscular freckled 
hand that had twirled many a ball on the local team. 
Stephen handed them to Mrs. Wing. 

“Great news this afternoon, Mrs. Wing,” volun- 
teered Lonnie, lifting his wheel, and pausing before 
he mounted to paddle off. “Chicago’s the favorite in 
the opening game of the series, ma’am. Boston’s 
backers are placing their hope in the Red Sox’s 
pitcher.” 

“Thank you kindly for the information, Lonnie. 
This being the cream of the news, I suppose there’s 
no especial other?” 

Lonnie, gratified with the reception given his sport- 


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ing-page scare heads, was willing to allow a place in 
relative values to other items. “There’s more trouble 
in that there Balkans, and when the mid-afternoon 
edition went to press, the Giants were losing to the 
Pirates, the game standing 6 to o.” He paddled off. 

Mrs. Wing was highly diverted. She chuckled. 
“What’s Hecuba to Lonnie, or he to Hecuba? Last 
summer he took his first trip into the world, going to 
Cincinnati on the Fourth of July for the day, to see 
the ball game there. Who was it said the songs of 
Homer were the sporting page of the Greeks? Just 
what now do you suppose he conceives the Balkans to 
be? Another ball team?” 

Her voice changed. “Naturally there’s more trouble 
there. Stephen, if you’re seeing your Eugene Lelewel 
again, ask him for me, what Servia’s retort to this 
Austrian insolence is going to be?” 

She held out a hand for the papers, which had 
slipped from her lap to the floor, felt for the glasses 
in her lap, but did not put them on. 

“Stephen, I’m troubled. We’re a peace-loving peo- 
ple, we of the United States. And yet in my lifetime 
I’ve seen this country of ours engaged in three wars, 
not to mention her numerous Indian wars. How many 
conflicts I’ve seen Europe engage in, it’s hard to say 
on the moment; and how many treaties made, resultant 
of these wars, that have held only until the next con- 
flict.” 

She sighed sharply. “War’s a dirty job, Stephen. 
Dropping all cant, it’s a game for advantage based on 
the animal instinct of getting at another creature’s 
throat; on the brute lust for killing. Under the Euro- 
pean system of universal armament and militaristic 
education, only the American who knows Europe as I 


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i39 


do quite realizes how easy it is for governments over 
there to create a war. To start people fighting who 
obey because they’re cattle, and trained to the habit 
of obedience when told to fight, for untold genera- 
tions.” 

Her hand moved along the smooth arm of her chair. 
“Your Eugene creature, and I, are similar uneasy 
spirits; though from different points of approach. 
Like him I deplore a European upheaval just now. 
Like him and his forces, so I and mine, are not ready. 
Education of one-half the world, I mean of my own 
sex, takes time. But give us present workers among 
women ten years more, Stephen; I prophesy it, who 
will not be here to see it, for the feminist movement is 
far greater than the single issue of suffrage; give us 
another decade for the educating of women, and, be- 
lieve what I tell you, there never will be another war!” 

He smiled. Whether he agreed with Mrs. Wing 
or not, she was a great old girl, and he adored her ! 

She saw the smile. Stephen as an individual she was 
amazingly fond of; as a male creature she did not 
doubt he was as hide-bound and obtuse as she consid- 
ered the majority of the sex. She had more to say, 
and said it. 

“War is woman’s natural enemy. She does right 
to hate it. The future lies in educating her to know 
and to see this. Stephen, this is more than any average 
issue with me. You may know what I’m going to say 
to you. According to the ideas in this section of the 
country as to what constitutes a fortune, I’m a rich 
woman. I’ve taken care of what I myself had, and the 
city property that came to me as a wife’s share in my 
husband’s estate happened to lie in what has become 
the heart of the retail district, and has trebled in its 


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values. I can count on a clear yearly income of sixty 
thousand dollars. I live on a third of this; I retrench; 
I deny Lucy; for eight months of the year wherever I 
am, I keep one and often two secretaries busy. With 
what? Aiding me in the distribution of my support, 
moral and material, in the spread of the doctrine of 
feminism among women. For us and our cause right 
now, a European war would be calamitous. We 
haven’t progressed far enough. Women as an organ- 
ized world force are as children starting to walk, 
hardly able as yet to stand alone !” 

She looked at Stephen sagely, somberly. “I know 
war I I know its devilish machinery for arousing the 
imagination by the shallowest of pretexts; its sounding 
cymbals called ‘self-defense,’ ‘national honor,’ and the 
like. I know the average caliber of the populace, and 
the lack of courage to face the opprobrium and sus- 
picion that pursues the noncombatant citizen. I know 
the contagion of the bellicose spirit when once it’s 
aroused. And myself have fallen a victim to the semi- 
hysterical state that once a country is in a state of 
war, seizes the nation, the people, and drives them 
before it as sheep on our western plains are driven 
before the sweep of a blizzard.” 

She leaned forward, and regarded Stephen if any- 
thing, more somberly. 

“I who hate war, and who, because of its stronger 
hold on him, broke with your grandfather, the man 
I loved, have myself succumbed to the contagion and 
the passion of it. The chief offending of my life, its 
major crime, and cardinal wrong, is that I, in 1862, 
induced two men, themselves under no moral obliga- 
tion, to go into the Civil War. Calculating to a nicety 
what I thought each man’s price, I proffered it. To 


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141 


the one, a negro, I agreed to buy and free his wife 
and children. President Lincoln within eighteen 
months freed the race; and the man presumably was 
killed at Manassas. What I did was to rob the woman 
of her husband, and the children of a father.” 

There was a twist about her old lips, and in her 
voice the anguish of strong feeling. 

“The other man whom I persuaded to enter the 
Union army, was an Irish emigrant who had yet to 
receive his papers making him an American citizen. I 
offered to pay his debts. He was staggering under 
an accumulation of these, incurred during the long 
illness and the succeeding death of his wife. As with 
Hannibal Jackson, the negro man, so it was with 
Michael McKane. He was killed at Chancellorsville, 
and his two motherless girls were left orphans. No, 
we women are not ready to be faced with another war, 
we haven’t found ourselves sufficiently, and as of old, 
the contagion of war with its corrosives and its poisons, 
will seize us. Here comes Bennie Harlan with his 
racket, across the grass. And here come Lucy and 
’Genie Harrison out the door. Get on with you to 
your tennis. ’Genie’s out with Lucy for the night, and 
you and Bennie are expected to stay for dinner.” 


CHAPTER XIV 


HE July days slipped by. For the first time in 



the memory of man, old Mrs. Lucy Wing was 


facing a summer in Kentucky, and facing it 
without grumbling. 

Conceding that she was what she claimed, at heart 
a democrat, with little tolerance for the assumptions 
of rank and privilege, the family of Wings into which 
she had married, and whose name her granddaughter 
bore, had no claims based on performance, to being 
with the people. 

The first Wing in America came over in 1618, one 
of the Society of Berkeley Hundred, a company com- 
posed chiefly of Gloucestershire men, Sir William 
Throckmorton one of these; and to whom young Wing, 
who was his nephew, was secretary. 

Arrived in the new colony of Virginia, he promptly 
fell out with his mates with whom he was associated, 
seeking and obtaining from “ye Council & General 
Courte,” permission to “remove from where he now 
liveth and plant uppon the ground at Mulberry Island.” 
The Court giving “leave and permission for him soe 
to doe.” 

He next fell out with “ye Council & General Courte,” 
and upon yet another issue. It being known to his 
descendants unto the present day that “if Mr. John 
Wing, gent, * would 9 absente himselfe from churche for 
Three Monthes, & uppon the Saboth days go a-huntinge 


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of hoggs on Mulberry Island, he must paye into the 
Publique Treasurie, 100 pound-weighte of Tobacco as 
provided by act of ye General Assembly.” 

Sixty years later, 1688-90, the years of “ye amazing 
revolution,” the grandson of this gentleman-trans- 
gressor of the Virginia Sabbath, John Wing also, and 
still of Mulberry Island, speaks caustically in a letter 
of the flight from England of the Stuart, “ye laste 
Gentleman-kinge” ; and of the seating on the English 
throne of “ye Dutchman of Orange.” 

This John Wing it was, whose domestic infelicities 
were notorious, and who dying before his spouse, left 
to the lady, “ye sum of £3.65.8*/. for a mourninge 
gowne ; and for a pair of ditto gloves, value 65.” 

The grandson of this John Wing, by name John 
Henry Wing, in 1770, quarreled with his twin brother, 
William Robertson Wing, over the favor of one “Ann, 
off-springe of Benjamin Poague of South Forke & 
Lettice, his wife.” Not waiting for the ceremony which 
gave Ann to William’s keeping, he went west over the 
Wilderness Road into Kentucky, and made himself a 
name as an Indian fighter. 

There was and still is extant a saying, “A Wing 
will have his way, come devil or doomsday.” 

John Henry Wing, grim warrior, was well in his 
forties, when in 1796, he traveled back to Virginia. 
Returning, he brought with him as his wife, a stout, 
high-colored lady with dark hair and black eyes, ac- 
companied by her slaves, and bringing with her her 
household goods. To wit, Mistress Ann Wing, the 
widow of his brother William. 

The lady left behind her in Virginia a stately habi- 
tation, for which she had systematically fought from 
the day she married William Wing; the building of 


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which grand mansion so greatly impoverished this per- 
son that he found himself considerably embarrassed 
ever after; and, to quote from his surviving written 
words on the subject, “in a place which pute mee well 
out of danger of spending soe much ever againe.” 

John Henry brought Mistress Ann to a four-roomed 
house of logs. A plain enough affair, standing on a 
slight knoll approached through a woodland, “nott soe 
far from the settlement of Middletown alreddy nearer 
to being a metropolis than is its sister settlement of 
Louisville, twelve miles away at the Falls of the Ohio.” 
The site in fact occupied by the brick house that re- 
placed it, and which survived it to this day. 

Surviving annals have it, that the fiercest of the 
differences between these two, Mistress Ann, and the 
doughty John Henry, arose over the question of the 
lady’s negroes, these being house servants whom she 
had brought with her. She insisted they be furnished 
with liveries, buff and blue by preference, and he pro- 
tested in favor of “honeste plaine garbe” ; neither gave 
in, and Madame’s house retinue oftenest went ragged; 
seemly coats and breeches of whatever nature, being 
provided for them by neither mistress nor master. 

The son and only child of these two, by name John 
Henry, built the present house in 1834. A needy 
potentate he, a spendthrift and reveler, he lived plen- 
tifully nevertheless; having negroes in abundance; 
keeping open house; proud, idle; fond of poker, cock- 
fighting, good whisky, and horse racing; as became a 
gentleman of his standing and fine lineage. 

He had two sons and several daughters. The sec- 
ond son was the eminent divine, Robertson Wing, the 
one departure of this nature known to the blood. The 


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eldest son, by name John Henry, was the husband of 
Lucy Routt. 

The next two John Henry Wings died young, the 
one the son of Lucy Routt, and the other her grand- 
son; the son in the Civil War, the grandson during 
the Spanish War, each before he was thirty. 

The young Lucy, the last of her line, suffered from 
too little romance in her nature, due perhaps to the 
excesses of some of these forbears; her mother, who 
died when she was four, herself coming from a line of 
slave-holding, high-living ancestry. Content that her 
grandmother should hold the center of the stage, her- 
self an onlooker, she so far submitted to life rather 
than enjoyed it. 

She had her standpoints, conscious and unconscious. 
That some human beings are the privileged superiors 
to most of those about them, she accepted as a fact; 
and was entirely of a mind that he who imposes his 
will on another that he is the better creature, is this 
thing! 

When Julius Buck, the son of the since dead ’Celie, 
the present ragtime genius at the kettle drum, was a 
little fellow he came up daily to the big house from his 
mother’s cabin on the rear of the place to play with 
Lucy, the two being of an age. 

On an autumn day, the white child, and the colored 
child, were standing beside an open kettle; a huge 
round-bellied affair, swung over an outdoor fire of 
wood embers in the barn lot. 

The business in hand was manipulated by Jerry 
Jackson, who was boiling out sorghum molasses for 
himself, and for such other servants on the place as 
might want to enjoy it with him. The Indian summer 


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air was redolent with the acrid and pungent sweetness 
of the boiling syrup. 

The small Lucy, standing by, in a blue reefer coat 
and a scarlet tam o’shanter, sniffed. She was an im- 
perious-tempered little creature. 

“I smells ’em too,” affirmed little yellow Julius, of 
a mind that molasses as an appeal to certain of the 
senses, is plural. 

Lucy looked him over with her large black eyes. 
“You don't.” 

He held his ground. “I does, I smells ’em; en ef I 
smacks my lips, I tastes ’em, too.” 

She slapped him. 

To-day, had she gone deep enough into her con- 
sciousness she would have found resentment still there, 
that the natural attributes which Julius claimed in com- 
mon with others for himself, were enjoyed by the 
human race at large; her fellow creatures of what- 
soever color, class and attainments, even as she, having 
“hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, pas- 
sions.” 

Her grandmother defined her to one of her 
friends : 

“She’s a Wing; no other blood is discernible in her, 
so is she dominated by the one. And should life deal 
with her too recklessly, incipient in her is the coldness 
and the cynicism of a worldling.” 

* * * * * * 

Love, after all, was not coming easily to Lucy. Not 
so readily could she escape the prison of her own tem- 
perament. # Love can be a most delicately balanced, an 
altogether and exquisitely sensitive thing, suffering its 
revulsions, and also experiencing its ecstasies. 

It was well into July. She had known Stephen some- 


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thing over six weeks. In view of the enormity of what 
he asked of her, six weeks is a modicum of time. So 
far as a knowledge of her own heart went, the first 
thirty-six hours had been sufficient. 

Two days ago she was happy in her absorption. 
Since then she had come to loathe love. Since then she 
had seen about her, a world sick for passion; a world 
of creatures seeking mates, as Stephen and she. 

Yesterday she came out the door of the little local 
post office, and all but collided with Julius Buck and 
William Coffin, co-members of the ragtime band of 
two. 

They were tight-locked on the pavement before the 
doorway, swaying, staggering, reeling, William, the 
brown boy, Julius, the nimbler, yellow boy. The advan- 
tage was with neither the one nor the other, when 
Julius, pinning the brown boy’s arms to his body with 
his one hold, upheaved him with a thrust of his own 
body, and lifting him, went down uppermost with him 
upon the flagging. 

There was no word, only the panting, sobbing 
breathings of the two, their silent concentration, deadly 
in its ferocity, broken by the thud of knuckles pounding 
on flesh, the blood up-spattering from the brown boy’s 
smashed features, showering the stones. 

A dozen men, the most of these white, emerging 
from the butcher shop, the post office, and the railway 
station, reached the two ; and the thing was over. 

Lucy, making her way from the post-office steps, 
caught a sentence from a colored woman onlooker : 

“It’s about Ben Dick’s little yellow Sally. She’s 
Julius’ girl, an’ she went las’ night with William to 
the Baptis’ barbecue.” 

Ben Dick was the colored carpenter of the locality. 


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Sally, his daughter, who was home for the summer 
from the state’s colored normal school, was small and 
comely. 

Lucy was sick and full of loathing. She told herself 
it was the brute showing in Julius; the beast creeping 
through his heritage from the jungle. 

* * * * * * 

On the evening of this same day, Lucy was present 
at a young people’s dance. She saw McHenry Stuart 
on the porch catch Betty Craig by the shoulder as she 
broke from him, whirl her about, kiss her brutally, and 
thrust her away. 

Lucy turned abruptly to reenter the house, and ran 
into Emily Gwynne, who was still madly in the power 
of her passion for McHenry. She, like Lucy, had 
witnessed the happening. It seemed to Lucy at the 
moment that, while she loathed McHenry, she the 
more loathed Emily. 

Bennie Harlan was late arriving. ’Genie was greet- 
ing him as Lucy came into the hall, and also was 
powdering her nose. 

“Why didn’t you come yourself to the telephone 
when I called you at your house an hour ago? Were 
you in your bath and buff, and couldn’t? That’s where 
I was when you called me before you left town.” 

Bennie’s face went horribly red. It was a mixed 
joy for him, this being in the society of the best. Life 
was no bromide for him in these inner circles where 
he was now moving, but rather was one continual 
sulphide with pep and explosion. 

“I say/” 

’Genie laughed. “Why cry out before I’m through ? 
I’m not going to say anything too liable to shame you 


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till your epidermis thickens a bit, like ours. We in 
my world do bathe, as I supposed you in yours do too, 
and not in our Annette Kellerman’s either.” 

She packed away her powder puff with deftness 
within the vanity case. “Bettie Craig’s going to an- 
nounce her engagement here to-night to Rowan Hart. 
I’m giving you an item for your paper, you under- 
stand.” 

She closed the small gold case with a snap. Then 
she snapped an eye at Bennie. “That is she expected 
at noon to announce it. She may have reconsidered. 
McHenry’s been rushing her too. She told him he 
must square with Emily first. It requires these days 
that one be practical, and sample all articles offering, 
before irretrievably accepting or rejecting any.” 

’Genie assumed no mock modesty. She was no hypo- 
crite. Having none, she pretended to none. She said 
what she felt, and thought no more about it. 

She was honest. She injected a tonic quality into all 
and any atmosphere she came into. Alike full of 
gusty joy, impish daring, and jaunty resilience, her 
laughing red mouth suggested primitive glee, and her 
brightly glancing eyes a kinship with the unmoral ani- 
mal world. She met the most extreme strictures 
brought against her. 

“It’s what we are,” was her defense. 

* * * * * * 

To-day Lucy loathed love. She hated man for be- 
ing man. She hated woman as woman. 

Stephen came by this afternoon following the dance, 
for her to go with him to the country club to play 
tennis with Charlie and Evelyn. Lifting her eyes as 
she joined him, ready to start, she colored violently. 


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It was not a blush, and her color continued high. 

She followed him dully and unwillingly to the car. 
She was keeping her appointment with him against 
her will. Her mind was thick with the lees of disen- 
chantment. She hated herself anew for being a 
woman; she hated her woman’s heart that even at this 
moment of disillusionment, hideously weakened under 
the force of Stephen’s presence. She shrank from him; 
shrank the more that she was aware, and with despera- 
tion, that the verge was near, a crisis upon her. 

sfc jfc j|t 

The brisk sets of tennis were over. Charlie and 
Evelyn had said good-by, and were off in their car for 
home. Lucy and Stephen saw them start, and went 
towards their own car. They paused in the open when 
they reached it, waiting for Bennie Harlan’s game to 
be over, who was going back with them to Ashe. 

They were two alone on the top of the world, as 
they stood here waiting. About them were the rolling 
links, the long descents of the driveway winding to 
the levels below, the neighboring roof-crowned hills, 
mates to their own, the river broad and resistless, the 
opposite Indiana shores, and in the distance on the 
Kentucky side, the city. 

Stephen lifted his eyes and looked at Lucy. The 
thing that she dreaded was here. The racket she car- 
ried trailed in the dust. She felt her body shiver. 

She had on a belted sweater over her white skirt 
and blouse, and wore a rough wool hat. Her color 
was brilliant. Looking away from her companion, she 
fixed her gaze on the west where a vast show of up- 
piling clouds were firing with the setting sun. 

His opening words were casual, but they did not 
deceive her. 


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1 5i 


“You play a bully game of tennis, Lucy. You ask 
no odds on account of your sex.” 

“Evelyn asks no odds.” 

Her eyes followed the course of the river as it made 
its way, wide and majestic, far beneath them on their 
hill, toward the west. A mighty volume, it now was a 
thousand shades of gleaming crimson from shore to 
far shore. A hundred and more years ago settlers 
came west from Pittsburg on its broad bosom, after 
the pioneer simplicity of travel in those days; the 
women and children housed in the small cabin upon the 
flatboat. Charles Janvier, the French emigre , and 
Julie, his wife, had come to Kentucky in this fashion. 
Lucy heard her grandmother say so to-day. 

“Lucy?” 

She braced herself. 

“Say that you begin to be in love with love? That 
you begin to tolerate the idea of me as lover?” 

The repressed and passionate sufferings of the past 
twenty-four hours rushed to her lips. She spoke with 
the intensity of desperation. She after all was only 
twenty. 

“I’d rather die than tolerate the thought of either!” 

“Lucy? You tell me this? What has happened that 
you say so?” 

He was smiling, regarding her as he had so often of 
late, with eyes of tender fondness, and as she saw, not 
taking her words too seriously. If he had touched 
her, so overwhelming was her passion of revulsion, she 
felt sure that she would die. 

“I haven’t any reason; it’s my mood. I loathe what 
you speak of as love.” 

All her agony went into the asseveration. 

He looked at her a long moment. “Let me take a 


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memorandum of my wits and senses,” he said, slowly; 
“for I seem to have lost ’em. Is the fault mine ? Will 
you tell me what it is I’ve done?” 

Tears of misery arose in her eyes. The lines of her 
brows were indrawn. 

“I won’t pretend you’ve done anything. I hate all 
you’re urging upon me, and only beg to go free.” 

Men likely never will understand woman’s innate 
chastity; as women never will entirely grasp man’s 
fundamental honesty. 

Stephen saw that the mood of disaffection upon the 
girl was real; for the time being was prevailing. He 
was curiously shaken. All of him that was not long- 
ing, was tenderness. 

She looked, not at the river below them now, but 
ahead into the west. The sun behind the high-piled 
clouds had stained these and the sky overhead, a thou- 
sand colors, crimson, orange, gold, violet, rose. These 
gleamed back from the river, lighted the treetops, and 
flashed from the windows of the farmhouses on the 
farther shore. 

He would not over-press her. Love such as hers, 
when she gave it, would be worth the patient waiting. 
Love with her, when it came to rest, would be abiding. 

“My dear, my de(tr!” The words were uttered 
softly. Then he spoke briskly: 

“And now we’ll find Bennie, and get on home.” 


CHAPTER XV 


I T was near the end of July, the twenty-eighth in 
fact. Stephen had dined at his uncle’s, a self- 
invited guest; and now was outstretched upon a 
leather couch, cigarette in hand, in what, as said before, 
was known with the household as the library. The 
business of the farm was conducted here by the man 
of the house, and here the male members of the' house- 
hold as by instinct drifted. 

It was a man’s room, furnished with a solid and 
handsome oblong central table, the same cheerfully lit- 
tered, a ponderous and comely old secretary-desk, a 
leather couch and slip-cushion leather chairs. Occupy- 
ing the wall space above the mantel, was a colored 
print in an old gilt frame. 

The print portrayed the three-quarter figure of an 
exquis, a fop, a petit-maitre f of the late eighteenth cen- 
tury period in France. His coat, double-breasted, with 
huge buttons, huge lapels, and a high-standing collar, 
as also the vest of richer fabric which showed below 
the high-cut waistline of the coat, opened upon ruffles 
at the throat. Ruffles appeared again at the wrists. 

The full small chin was supported with a monstrous 
stock. One hand, shapely and beautiful, held by its 
knob a tasseled cane, the arm outstretched its full and 
jaunty length. Below the line of the vest was a glimpse 
of tight-fitting breeches. The low-crowned beaver hat, 
and the curling locks flowing to the shoulders, framed 
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a face that was comely as a maiden’s. The eyes were 
long and wide apart, the nose had a hint of an arch, 
and the lips were full and smiling. 

The eyes of Stephen, from his couch, were on the 
picture, as they had been a thousand thousand times 
in his lifetime. It was the likeness of his great-great- 
great-uncle Etienne Janvier. 

“Some chap,” he told himself as he had told him- 
self before; “the fop complete. That’s what bothered 
and got me when I was a kid, knowing how when his 
time came, he married Madame Guillotine like a gal- 
lant. It’s a great thing evidently, to have ideas you’re 
willing to die for!” 

He turned his head on the cushion of the couch, 
and called to a figure passing along the hall. 

“I’m in here waiting for you, Aunt Annie. Yearn- 
ing to talk. Come along in, do, and sit by me while 
I smoke.” 

She came in. She had a gauzy scarf about her, its 
hue a bright orange. It lent a glow to her brunette 
coloring, which her square-cut black dress dulled, and 
she looked well. 

“Je t’ adore, T ante Annie. Sit here by me. Thanks 
awfully.” 

He settled himself. “Please ma’am, I want to talk. 
That’s why I had dinner with you.” 

“I guessed as much. Get on with it.” 

“I’ve had eight weeks of more than any mere modi- 
cum of happiness. I’m referring to my quest of Lucy. 
Aren’t you glad for me, sweetie? Eight weeks of 
happiness in a lifetime doesn’t always come to a man, 
you know.” 

“Delighted to be made aware of it.” 

“You’re to be more, you’re to be party to it. I need 


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your cooperation. I want your help. You as yet don’t 
know it, but Mrs. Wing, with a gap of sixty-odd years 
between her two appearances beneath this roof, is going 
to be the occasion, and the central figure, of one of your 
niftiest dinners.” 

“Is this an assertion, or a request?” 

“Oh, I know what’s in your mind. Lean over and 
put your cheek on mine, and I’ll tell you more. You’re 
going to jolly Uncle Stephen into thinking that he, and 
he alone, suggested it; and you’re going to see that 
Charlie and Evelyn catching the idea, back you up in 
so convincing him.” 

“What about Evelyn, if you please?” This person 
came into the room. 

Stephen came to a sitting posture, and answered : 

“Staged! Title of Production, The Triumph of 
The Years; or The Ultimate Routt. Impresario, 
Uncle Stephen. Stage Properties, Aunt Annie. Lead- 
ing character, Mrs. Lucy Routt Wing. Date, to be 
determined on.” 

Evelyn took a seat upon the corner of the cheer- 
fully littered table. Her foot and leg swung. 

“Your dramatics carry me away, Stevie. Count 
me with you whatever it’s all about. Charlie’s come. 
He’s had his dinner, Maman; he was delayed, and says 
he ate in town. A last edition of the paper he brought 
with him has it that big bully Austria-Hungary has 
declared war on little stepbrother Servia.” 

Stephen got to his feet with this, and put the end of 
his cigarette into a tray. “I’d telephone your news to 
Mrs. Wing, Evie, but that the old girl wouldn’t sleep 
to-night. She told me the other day, in view of the 
conditions in Europe, if it would hasten the day and 
give woman an equal voice in any coming troubles, 


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she’d deed everything she has to the feminist cause, 
and leave Lucy to charity.” 

Evelyn lifted her voice. Her husband was passing 
along the hall. “Charlie! Bring yourself in here. 
Let’s make these two good for a rubber at bridge? A 
cent a point?” 

* :jc * * * * 

On the evening of the third of August, Mrs. Wing 
arrived in her car at the Stephen Janviers’, come with 
her granddaughter, to dine. 

The open door of the house, and its every window, 
streamed with the light of welcome. Helen Janvier, 
Stephen, and Colonel Tecumseh Craig, already arrived, 
were on the porch with the four members of the house- 
hold. 

As the car came to a pause before the stone-flagged 
walk, Mr. Janvier, Charlie and Stephen, went down 
the porch steps. Anne, who had walked to the top of 
the steps with them, caught Stephen’s arm as he passed 
her, and pressed it. 

Mrs. Wing, from within the car, addressed the trio. 

“Help Lucy out, one of you. Let’s get her out of 
the way before I attempt to come.” 

Stephen opened the door, and Charlie helped Lucy 
out. He said ever afterward that the girl, whom he 
could see in the light streaming upon her from the 
house, patrician, perfectly gowned, her color beyond 
defining brilliant, had arrived this evening at the com- 
pleteness of her beauty. In this Mr. Janvier sustained 
his son. 

She started ahead with Charlie, who, with a curious 
sense of deportment born of the occasion, oflered her his 
arm. But having started she paused, and with deliber- 
ation turned back to Stephen. There is a pride that will 


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not let itself be outmatched. After sixty years Mrs. 
Lucy Routt Wing was made welcome by these Janviers 
at their home. The girl pausing, spoke with her eyes 
to Stephen in the face of his kinsmen, with a sweetness 
and a poignancy indescribable. 

He told her later that he caught his breath. That 
his senses reeled. That his eyes clung to her as she 
turned away, and with Charlie went on to the steps 
and up to the porch. 

****** 

He turned back to the car and with his uncle assisted 
Mrs. Wing, it being no small feat for her to descend, 
game old girl. Arrived on the flagging, she paused, 
her cane in one hand, the other on the arm of Mr. 
Janvier, and got her breath. 

“The car is to wait. It’s been an atrociously hot 
day. For no one on God’s earth but you Janviers, 
would I have undertaken this.” 

She handed the cane to Stephen, took her hand from 
Mr. Janvier’s arm, and began to fumble amid the folds 
of the lace scarf that was wrapped about her; in time 
dragging forth a gold lorgnon on a chain, a bauble set 
with jewels. 

One saw at this that Mrs. Wing this evening was 
very fine indeed; wearing a gown of purple satin, and 
much fine lace, with a square of lace upon her head, 
and the glitter of rings upon her hands. 

She peered ahead of her, the glasses upheld, her 
gaze lifting and traveling upward. Behind her, on 
the line of the horizon, an August moon was rising, 
orange-red and gigantic. 

“Blind as an owl at midday. Stephen senior, be my 
eyes. Tell me, for instance, with all the innovations 
and the additions I hear you’ve made to the house, is 


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the belvedere as it used to be on the roof?” 

“Just as it was, but for an occasional coat of paint, 
Mrs. Wing.” 

The glasses fell on their chain, and her hand went 
back to its place on the arm of her host. She put out 
her other hand to Stephen for the cane. She spoke 
contentedly, remaining where she was, and showing no 
disposition to proceed. 

“That belvedere, you must know, intrigued the 
young people of my day, who came here to the house. 
We flocked to it on the roof whenever we were al- 
lowed. It was a chosen place of summer evenings, 
and many a couple slipped away to it unobserved.” 

Her cane hunted a place on the flagging for its 
ferrule tip. 

“It delighted our imaginations that Louis Philippe, 
the exile, brief sojourner as he was in the life of our 
community, planned this so charming adjunct to the 
house then building, of his fellow-country-people, 
Charles and Julie Janvier. As also it titillated what 
was romantic in our natures, to follow on the original 
drawing made for the house, and framed and hanging 
under glass in the library, the exiled Bourbon’s pen- 
cilled tracings for this adjunct.” 

She turned with surprising sudden vigor on the 
younger man. She spoke too with harsh vigor : 

“Love is as good as anything you’ll get in life. I 
say so because I know. Sixty-eight years ago, with 
the alarms of war all about us calling on youth to go, 
on that railed platform where we young people loved 
to be, I quarreled with the man I cared for. Life 
betrayed me. I was cheated, defrauded, was done! 
Let’s get on now to the others.” 

She went up the steps to the porch on the older 


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man’s arm. Arrived there, she was lively and agree- 
able. 

“Well, Mrs. Janvier? Helen, also? And Charlie’s 
wife, whom I haven’t seen since she was a schoolgirl? 
Tecumseh Craig, next thing to my own day and gener- 
ation, why haven’t you been to Ashe this month past, 
to see me, and to dine?” 

****** 

Something more than an hour later, Lucy, led by 
Stephen, her hand in his that he the better might guide 
her up the final short flight of stairs, stepped out on 
the balustraded platform. 

She looked about her, lifted her face to the heavens 
with the climbing moon, and the faintly visible stars, 
then went and peered over the rail. The world below 
her, a misty sea of treetops, was dusky and murmurous. 

She turned about, the railing now behind her, and 
faced Stephen. The moon touched the whiteness of 
her throat and shoulders and her bare arms; pointing 
too, the sheen of her dress, and her satin slippers. 

“And now what? You begged me, and I came. It’s 
cobwebby, and it’s littered with dead leaves. You 
might have had it swept.” 

Drawing a breath, he took a step toward her, with 
a sound half-laugh, half-groan. Then he fell back, 
his arms that opened as he came, falling at his sides. 

“If every star up there had a chanting tongue, the 
whole of ’em couldn’t tell you the half of my love. 
Fact, Lucy.” 

Ridiculous as they were, his words seemed to shout; 
to stir the air like the sound of a trumpet. 

“Why did you urge me to come here with you?” 

“A fancy, madness, impulse, caprice — how do I 
know? Lucy, darling!” 


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She looked at him steadily. 

“I rather took it that grandmother told you what 
she told me on the way here to-night. And that you 
brought me up here to convince me that the mills of 
the Janvier gods grind slowly, and so forth?” 

His breath caught. “And, yet, Lucy, oh, my darling, 
you came?” 

She nodded, smiling; meeting his eyes; her head 
carried high in a very proud way. 

* * * * * * 

Long after, Lucy recalled this moment of her sur- 
render; resummoning to her mind its every aspect; her 
every comprehension of what was happening. 

And this is love ? So she had asked herself. Where- 
in the senses swoon? Whose ecstasy is more than all 
else of life? 

Whereupon she had withdrawn herself from 
Stephen’s arms; from the touch of his lips. Telling 
herself that to prolong the moment were to die; or 
surviving, to permit it to be touched with grossness. 
She had not known it was in herself so to love; and 
so to be happy, loved. 

* * * * * * 

When Stephen and Lucy returned below stairs to the 
parlor, its windows open to any passing breath of the 
night, their reappearance was unnoticed. Charlie, who 
went in the doorway ahead of them, had the floor. 

An oddness was in his voice, akin to and not quite 
a tremor, as with one wrought on by the news he 
brings, and the more desirous of going on record as 
averse to things sensational. 

“It was Henderson at the telephone.” 

He said this deprecatingly, and addressed himself 
to his father. Henderson, an intimate and crony of 


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Charlie’s, was the night editor of one of the local 
newspapers. 

“He gave me the news just in over the wires. He 
says they’ll have a special on the streets by the time 
I’m telling it. German troops to-day crossed the 
French frontier at three different points.” 

The group addressed was above the general average 
in intelligence, and acquaintance with affairs. Accord- 
ing to its several points of view, and its individual idio- 
syncrasies it broke into comment : 

Mr. Stephen Janvier. — Incredible ! 

Mrs. Stephen Janvier. — If it’s true. 

Evelyn. — Dickie Henderson’s stringing you, Charlie. 
(Then as an afterthought) Why, Mother’s in Paris 
this moment, waiting there for Father to join her! 
Mr. Stephen Janvier. — It’s the beginning. Bis- 
marck and his doctrine; the iron man. 

Mrs. Wing. — Damn those Balkans ! 

Colonel Tecumseh Craig ( scion of 1812). — The 
crime of the Crimea. That old buried sin lifting 
its head. 

Helen (the Virginian ). — England will hold the 
peace; England will prevent it. 

Mr. Stephen Janvier. — Did Henderson say if they 
came through Luxembourg, Charlie? Germany 
can’t violate the neutrality of Belgium. 

Mrs. Wing. — Women will never permit a general 
European war. Let ’em get together. Let ’em 
call Ellen Key and Olive Schreiner to organize ’em. 
Charlie. — What do you suppose it’ll do to the mar- 
ket, Dad? And what to Wall Street? There’ll be 
times just ahead, I’m thinking, to hold on to gilt- 
edge securities if you’ve got ’em! 


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Mr. Stephen Janvier (his voice prevailing , and at 
the end holding the floor. Its customary urbanity 
and suavity were gone out of it, and it was direct 
and crisp). — My brother Charlie and I — your 

father, Stevie — little chaps of eight and six, were in 
Paris with our parents in the ’7o’s, when the Ger- 
mans crossed the frontier before. We were there 
for some years following the close of the war here 
at home, we Janviers having been pretty notorious 
rebels. 


CHAPTER XVI 



HIS is no story of what followed in Europe. It 


is the story of how Lucy Wing, feeling herself 


betrayed, reacted to certain events that followed. 
Looking back on these things, they seem now to the 
mind to be unreasonable. That the lover overnight 
will leave his new-found love; the husband his wife; 
the father his children; yes, and as we now know, the 
woman her family group ; to us who ourselves were of 
it, and in it, and with it, the psychology of war already 
is become inexplicable. 

From these initial days of the start, the war came 
between Lucy and Stephen. Intangible in its workings 
at first, little by little it separated them; as if an opaque 
veil, maddening in its persisting power to come be- 
tween, fell athwart the two. It dulled for her the 
joy of her first meeting with him on the day after her 
surrender, as she saw it, to his enfolding arms. He 
had come for the afternoon and dinner. She came 
downstairs and found him and her grandmother at 
odds. Mrs. Wing had the floor and spoke hotly: 

“I’m not saying you’re not a consistent male, young 
man, bold to see justification for war where war is. 
In this, along with your fellow male creatures, want- 
ing ballast rather than canvas. I’m saying entirely a 
different thing, which is this: Annihilate by some 
happy stroke of fate, the professional diplomats 
throughout Europe, and this death grapple on to-day, 


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however outrageous the provocation, will stop of itself 
to-morrow. Decry war; this war; any war; all war. 
In Christ’s name, don’t condone it!” 

****** 

The end came six months later. It can be said, 
however, that Lucy was unprepared. That she suc- 
ceeded in so dulling her apprehensions, that she so de- 
ceived herself as to the extent of Stephen’s mental 
travelings, seems incredible. Incredible most of all, in 
retrospect, to herself. Being in love, she locked the 
doors of her mind to what she was resolved not to see. 

It was January, and the two Janvier families, since 
October, were returned to the city. Stephen unher- 
alded, appeared one forenoon at Ashe. Lucy came 
down to him promptly. 

He was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs, 
and they walked the length of the hall to the parlor 
together. Her face wore no mask these days as to 
her happiness through and with him, and she looked 
at him with smiling inquiry; her eyes beneath the lines 
of her dark brows, and even the firm and lovely curves 
about them, seemed to glow. 

Arrived within the square old room, he took her in 
his arms, holding her long and close. 

Her face caught terror from his, pale as she now 
saw it was, and drawn. She heard him breathing hard. 

“What is it, Stephen?” She seized his hand in both 
her own. 

He led her to a sofa, put her on it and sat beside 
her. He in his turn took her hands, and looked at her. 

“I’ve caught up with myself, honey. I know now 
what I’ve got to do. I’ve been like the man of the 
Scriptures, torn by seven devils ; devils or angels as we 


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165 


look at it, setting up their shout inside of me. I’ve 
forborne asking you to marry me, knowing as I did 
this was coming. Lucy, I’ve got to get into this fight!” 

She withdrew her hands while he was speaking, 
shrinking from him, incredulity in her every aspect. 
Now a burning blush rushed over her face. She strug- 
gled to her feet, he rising with her. 

He nodded sorrowfully. “Just that, my darling.” 

She looked at him, bringing her hands together, 
palm to palm, a little wildly, and laughed, incredulous 
still. It was as if the world that for twenty years had 
gone very well for her indeed, had paused with a jolt 
of hideous dislocation, and now was going the other 
way. 

“I didn’t come hoping to make it appear sensible, 
my darling, or reasonable; but to tell you. I might 
say to you that my interest in the freedom of man is 
a greater part of me than I knew. But I won’t. I 
won’t endeavor to explain it.” 

She pushed back a step further from him. Color- 
less by now, coldly erect and seemingly taller, one read 
her nevertheless to be aflame with anger. 

“And I’m nothing to you?” 

“Are everything.” 

“In such event — am nothing.” 

“Are all, my darling. Don’t make it harder. Can’t 
you see f” 

“I see that when men love women, they give them 
what portion of their lives it pleases them. But when 
women love they give all. I see this. And I see that 
with all the rest of women, I, too, have been a fool !” 

“Lucy!” 

“Why did you thrust yourself into my life? I was 


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1 66 


content. Why did you break into my affection? Why 
did I let you through my resolves? But — Stephen — I 
know, I know — you don’t mean it!” 

“Lucy, won’t you be even a little kind?” 

The corrosive of resentment at this invaded her, 
heart and mind; entered and possessed her. 

“ ‘Love for man turns women into martyrs.’ I read 
this some place. But it shall not turn me. I’m being 
asked by you, to be part with so beastly — so bestial — an 
instrument as war?” 

“Listen to me, Lucy. Woman’s generosity to man is 
man’s making. Since time was this is true. Her will- 
ingness to grasp what is best in him fortifies this best 
in him against the less decent. Be with me in this.” 

She turned and hurried from the parlor. 

He followed, numb with the realization of how the 
young perfection of her struck into fhe heart of his 
being. 

She hurried through the doorway of the sitting room 
across the hall. 

It was not yet noon, but Mrs. Wing, weary evidently 
with the business of her start for the day, was fallen 
into a doze in her chair. 

Wee and weazened and exhausted she looked, her 
head drooped forward; the million wrinkles making 
up the parchment skin of her face seen in the cruel 
light of the morning sun. 

These days were going hard with her. An attitude 
alien to the world of war, was become an obsession 
with her; a justification indeed of much of her past; 
and she refused to yield to any claim upon her in this 
present one. 

She roused as Lucy reached her; sat up in her chair; 
took a look at her grandchild; gave one to Stephen 


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167 


following in Lucy’s wake; and alert and keen, lent 
attention. She showed anxiety, but no surprise. 

“Grandmother — exactly what’s the ' story, exactly 
why did you give up Stephen’s grandfather?” 

The burning old eyes went from the one to the other, 
from her child, to her child’s lover. 

“He chose a war of aggression and spoils to me. I 
suffered. The depth of her affection is the measure 
which determines a woman’s capacity for unhappiness. 
Love once truly given — I have come to believe — is 
basic and eternal. Nearing ninety, I suffer still. But 
I was right!” 

“Stephen chooses war to me, grandmother. He tells 
me he is going, expecting to take part in this one. In 
which event I feel myself compelled to give him back 
his love.” 

The sardonic shrillness in the old voice responding, 
was appalling; its bitter fury, amazing. 

“History then does repeat itself? We in our egotism 
are but a vain and pretentious lot of cockatoos? And 
wisdom died with Solomon, the Preacher, King over 
Israel in Jerusalem: The thing that hath heen f it is 
that which shall be; and that which is done is that which 
shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun!” 

The eyes of the infuriated old woman swept the 
young man, head to foot, standing here before her. 
“No better then, and no worse, than your grandfather ! 
The eternal male repeated in you! Following the 
circle you arrive back at the starting place, and so 
complete the treadmill of the generations!” 

Stephen looking at her, yet looked past her. The 
hornets of self-questioning which so had tormented 
him, buzzed around the vulnerable parts of his mind 
again. Was she correct? Was this necessity upon him 


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to go, the original man in him after all? The lust to 
war that had drowsed and nodded beside the inner 
fire of his being, as do grandsires at the hearths of 
their children’s children? 

“As to that, Mrs. Wing, can a man after all be 
other than he is?” 

“Ha !” she cried, “say no more, if you please, to me. 
I know the whole litany of man’s argument when to 
war and arms he’d turn. And what of my grandchild? 
Is woman — forever secondary, so it would appear — 
always to meet and follow man’s needs? Hear me, 
young man. Men are proverbially blind, proverbially 
selfish, and amazingly stupid, where women are con- 
cerned. I may say there never has been a man who 
really understood any woman. Iris that women by 
long training through the centuries, are constitutional 
actresses, and also liars; yielding themselves to man’s 
conceptions of them, and by playing thus upon his 
vanity, holding his affections.” 

Again those hornets buzzed within the mind of 
Stephen. Had he in his desire for Lucy, been pretty 
much a law unto himself? Had a whimsical and selfish 
individualism summed up his philosophy of life? 
There are caprices in the reason, as he well knew, 
where heart and mind dupe one another. 

Lucy was speaking, and quietly. “I think you owe 
Stephen an apology, grandmother. Our right to hold 
him answerable, ended with his announced decision.” 

“I ask Stephen’s pardon for helping him to the 
truth?” cried Mrs. Wing, if possible more imperiously 
furious than before. “On the contrary, I reiterate all 
I’ve said. And I’ll add a word here. Don’t hope to 
convert Lucy. I for one, don’t intend to permit her 
to be persuaded.” 


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169 


She seemed struck at this with another thought. 
Her voice dropped and became conversational. 
“Where and how is your friend, Lelewel? With his 
creed of internationalism of thought? Another fool, 
he I” 

“He’s disappeared. I forgot to mention it. He 
dropped out of things back in the autumn; disappear- 
ing soon after the start of the trouble over there.” 

“And the wife and the boy?” 

“He appears to have failed ’em, somehow. She’s 
heard from him just once since he left. She came to 
our office to consult me as a lawyer. She seems to 
feel his union ought to help her. She says her mother 
is dead — and there’s nothing more for her in Cincin- 
nati, her former home, than here. I advised her to 
go to work.” 

Mrs. Wing laughed again. “The old story. Again 
the eternal masculine!” 

She leaned back in her chair. Her tone like her 
words, seemed by intention, impersonal and unimpas- 
sioned. “Well, this country’s better off at any time 
without his kind. As far back as Jefferson’s day, he 
held that it’s an error to attract artificers and me- 
chanics from foreign parts to our shores. Those who 
labor in the earth, the husbandmen, he held to be the 
desirable immigrant. Said he, as I recall his words, 
‘I consider the class of artificers as the panders of 
vice, and the instruments by which the liberties of a 
country are generally overturned.’ ” 

* * * * * * 

The next day Stephen’s mother came out from the 
city to Ashe. 

Lucy came down, bringing the excuses of her grand- 
mother, who was spending the day in bed. 


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Helen was the well-dressed woman, from the turn of 
her small hat’s brim, to the hang of her tailored skirt. 
Her fair hair was lustrous, and as always, in perfect 
order. She seemed to have just left the hands 
of some competent maid, so fresh, so fragrant, so 
immaculate, she was. Yet she, like the generality of 
southern women, was her own maid. 

The first exchange of greetings over, she, after 
a moment’s irresolution, took in hers both of Lucy’s 
hands. She thought a ghost of a tremor shook the 
girl’s lips, but she wasn’t sure. 

The older woman’s heart ached as she gazed at the 
younger. The girl in Lucy had vanished; had left her 
forever, Helen feared. This was a woman, her every 
feature deepened, quickened with shock. A woman 
whose erstwhile latent instincts, passive creeds, passive 
prejudices, overnight had become conscious forces. 
The small, full mouth had lost the curves of girlhood; 
these lips were locked upon pain. Her first swift 
and hot resentment toward Stephen, it was evident had 
endured. 

Helen went straight to the heart of the self- 
appointed purpose bringing her here. 

“My Stephen, Lucy, is a creature of directness, 
fervor and simplicity. If he feels he has to go, darling, 
you and I may as well face the inevitable. I have 
known him, you see, from his birth; he will go.” 

Lucy withdrew her hands. She saw to it that Helen 
was seated; herself taking a chair near by, and indi- 
cating that she was ready again to listen. Since yes- 
terday she had remained quiet; benumbed with anger 
and amazement. To her position in defense of the 
mighty claims of love, was added the indignation of 
a woman who considers that she has been betrayed, 


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I 7 I ' 


robbed, played with. She had that outraged, choking 
sensation which a child feels when an adult strikes it, 
whether with or without justice, and goes his way, 
leaving the victim helpless and without redress. Now 
and then she had trembled; and once or twice she had 
cried. Reaching this point, each time the same horror, 
and the same incredulity, had come again upon her; 
the same indignation and the sense of outrage. And 
she had hurried to her feet, to walk feverishly about 
the house; or into the yard with its wintry aspect, its 
patches of lingering snow, its stark and white-limbed 
sycamores, blue-black spruces, black-massed pines. 
Once she found herself beyond the frozen fields on the 
banks of the ice-bound creek, dully watching some 
Negro children from a cabin on the farther shore, slide 
on a glassy path which as she gazed, they swept clean 
of snow again with the nubbin of an old broom. 

Helen’s eyes were on Lucy’s face. A little fold of 
suffering showed between her own brows, and she 
talked with effort. 

“An inward spring is necessary to natures such as 
Stephen’s, Lucy. When he ceases to believe in joy; 
when he ceases, as he would put it, to be in love with 
life and love, the best of him will be gone. His is a 
healthy vigor, which as yet, tolerates in himself nothing 
sour or gloomy. It’s hard to comprehend, or to esti- 
mate, if we think about it, what the value is to the 
world of such a nature; what its use to society. Shall 
you and I, can we, through his faith in us, help to keep 
him as he is?” 

Lucy was silent. She listened. Totally unaware, 
such being the self-absorption of youth, such its shell 
of impenetrability, such its submersion in its own suf- 
ferings, that this mother of Stephen, who was pleading 


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her son’s cause, had been and was, enduring agony 
equal to her own. 

“Night in and out, Lucy, I’ve heard him in his room, 
walking to and fro. I asked God to spare me this 
Gethsemane a second time. I cried to Him that I 
lacked the vital courage to go through with this demand 
on me again. I went through it with Stephen’s father, 
you see.” 

She paused; found the self-control she sought, and 
went on. “When yesterday morning, Stephen at day- 
light came into my room after a night of such pacing, 
I knew it was come. I foresaw what he had to tell me, 
and realized the futility of anything I might say.” 

Again she paused; and again went on. “He sat on 
the edge of the bed beside me. He took my hands. 
‘I’m most frightfully fond of you, you see, Mummy,’ 
he said; ‘so I’ve come to tell you it seems obligatory 
for me to get into this miserable fight.’ ” 

Helen’s voice was level and even. “Shall I tell you 
how my son looked to me at that moment, as he sat 
beside me, in the white light of the growing dawn? 
He had the look to me of an eagle, needs must about 
to mount.” 

Lucy to this, spoke with irony. “Men always have 
looked upon war as an heroic thing. Women know 
that it’s insane.” 

Helen arose, and going to the girl, took her hands 
again. Such cold, pitiful young hands. 

‘We’ll only get anywhere, Lucy darling, you and I, 
by facing conditions as they are. It’s not what you or 
I think about it, but what is. The mixture in my son 
of dash and steadfastness, that I met first and learned 
to know in his father, makes for a certain tenacity. 


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i73 


Nothing I, or any other person brought to bear upon 
him in the past, ever moved him from his moral anchor- 
age as he saw it, once he was convinced he was there. 
Perhaps human beings, prone to error, should not be 
like this; but various of them are. And not to admit 
realities when these face us, is the reverse of sensible. 
It’s hard for me to say this, Lucy; as hard for me — 
who suffer also — as for you. But since Stephen feels 
he must go, there is nothing for you and me but the 
fact; he will go” 

She stood up. Had she said too much? Said the 
right thing, or the wrong? Understanding the girl’s 
pain and her unhappiness, her older heart ached, apart 
from its quota of personal misery. 

“May Stephen come out, Lucy? He wonders how 
you feel about seeing him? About hearing from him 
direct, as to his purposes and plans?” 

* * * * * * 

Lucy saw Stephen when he came. There was nothing 
petty in the girl. It did not occur to her to pretend that 
she did not find her happiness in him. Frightened by 
the pain she saw ahead of her, by the black misery of 
the future, driven beyond herself with the suffering of 
losing him, she saw as it were a door opening to her. 
Convinced she was right, she took it. 

“Marry me, Stephen; now; to-day, if you say; and 
stay?” 

A peculiar line crept about his mouth. Looking at 
her, he smiled faintly. That this smile hid suffering 
was evident. He put out his hands to her, and let them 
fall with hopelessness, at his sides. He spoke as one 
whose strength does but serve thus far, with nothing 
over and to spare. 


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“I’m no doubt the dub I appear. As I said in my 
letter yesterday to Warrington Adams, probably to 
everybody but myself, it appears a piece of bonehead 
botching. How can I marry you, Lucy, since you feel 
as you do? And when I know I am to go?” 

His lips as was their way under their owner’s stress, 
went twisted. His resolves crashed about him. He, as 
he full well knew, was more human than she. 

“Marry me despite it, darling. I did not mean to 
ask it of you, but I do. Marry me with no thought 
other than we do love. When this mess is over, I’ll 
be back.” 

A deep flush replaced the recent pallor of the girl’s 
cheeks. Her brows had knitted. 

The tap of a cane sounded along the floor of the 
hall, and Mrs. Wing came into the parlor. 

“Well, Stephen. Glad and sorry to see you. Don’t 
hope to persuade Lucy to your way of thinking. I for 
one, as I told you, don’t intend to permit her to be 
persuaded.” 

She looked from him to Lucy, and back again; sat- 
isfied apparently by what she read. 

“Mine, no doubt, my dear boy, is a cruel order of 
intelligence. As your Uncle Stephen once told me to 
my face, in these very words I use, in a passage-at- 
arms in a magistrate’s court. I had brought the charge 
against the son, as it happened, of his colored butler, 
for trespassing, and he had appointed himself to defend 
him. But such as this intelligence of mine is, it does 
not willingly hoodwink itself as yours right now 
hoodwinks you.” 

She hobbled to him, and put a hand on his arm. 

“Do I not know the stuff that has snared you, my 
dear boy; the platitudinous catchwords and phrases 


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that in all wars are spread — as lime upon the twig for 
the bird — to catch and to capture the unwary?” 

She peered up, seeking to see and to read his face. 
“I know these catchwords of old, my boy. As for ex- 
ample: It’s the object of war, that makes it or not, 
honorable . A righteous war is one whose purpose is 
derived from a hatred of war . No nation and no peo- 
ple must be allowed to provoke free men of free wills, 
with impunity. The bad old era, where might is right, 
is now to be done away with forever. In a just cause 
morality is the largest asset. The moral weakness in 
an unjust cause is its greatest liability. Phrases such 
as these, Stephen, are not new. Thrice is he armed 
who hath his quarrel just . I could keep on, as you see, 
indefinitely.” 

She smote the floor at her feet, “Old, old, these 
salves to conscience, Stephen; old as man himself. 
War, with men, appears to be an instinct. And I for 
my part have no belief in the immutability of instinct. 
Man were forever then a slave, fixed in his limitations. 
There is no instinct, however deep-planted because 
longest held to, that man cannot master. And the in- 
stinct for war is one of these. Lay down your arms! )} 

Again she peered, seeking to read his face. “Shall 
I tell you what I have endeavored to have Lucy from 
her childhood see in history? Battles, sieges, defeats 
and reverses, victories; the overthrow of kings and 
kingdoms; terms of peace; leading inevitably to subse- 
quent fresh hostilities, new overthrows, and fresh nego- 
tiations, soil again for discontents; an ever-recurring 
and ever-vicious circle. Put this point of view in your 
pipe if you will, and go home and smoke it. Maybe it 
will bring you to your senses.” 


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Stephen’s preparations went on. There was business 
of divers natures to be attended to. 

The day before he was to leave to join his uncle in 
Washington, he came to Ashe, and as usual Lucy came 
down to him. 

“Lucy!” 

“Yes?” 

“You do love me? Love me, as you and I concede 
this to mean?” 

“I don’t seem able to help it, Stephen.” 

“Then marry me. Your grandmother is an old 
woman. Let me have the right to put you in my 
mother’s arms before I go, and in Uncle Stephen’s 
protection.” 

“I’ll marry you within the next hour if you’ll give 

up this idea, and stay.” 

****** 

Stephen awoke the next morning in a flood of bright- 
est winter sunshine. His bed, the floor with its rugs, 
the walls with their patterned papering, were bathed 
with it. 

It was his way; every blind was up; each curtain 
thrust aside, and the outside shutters spread wide. 

It was a back room; the bare-twigged branches of 
an ancient peach tree rose above the sill of one of the 
open windows; the outside air, streaming in along with 
the rays of the mounting sun, was frosty; the sounds 
of a winter morning in a city neighborhood reached 
him. 

To bathe and dress did not take him overlong. It 
was Tuesday. He would leave at noon to-day for 
Washington. On Thursday his mother would follow 
him, joining him and his uncle in New York. The 
date of his sailing from that city was indeterminate; 


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conditional on the news he would find awaiting him in 
Washington. 

Upstanding and intent, he buttoned his vest and 
getting into his coat, went down to his mother and 
breakfast. For his convenience the meal this morning 
was ordered an hour early. From the breakfast table 
he was going to Ashe, using his car to get there. 

Mrs. Wing, Lucy, and Miss Kitty McKane were at 
breakfast when he came in to them, in the big and 
comfortable dining room. Here too, the morning sun 
striped the wall and the floor. A Wedgewood pitcher 
stood on a silver tray in the center of the breakfast 
table, a receptacle for a dozen stalks of white flowers. 

Lucy arose from the table and joined him, the two 
going slowly back along the hall. Arrived in the 
parlor, he caught her to him. 

“Marry me, Lucy. My car’s at the door, and if I 
telephone in to Charlie he’ll make things ready for us 
by the time we get there.” 

“You to leave me then, and go?” 

“Just that, my darling.” 

She looked at him, very pale ; then withdrew herself 
from his arms, her eyes still fastened on his face ; back- 
ing against the wall, her hands seeking it behind her, 
as for support. 

Seeing it was futile, he reached her with a stride, 
found her hands, drew them around to him and kissed 
them with an endless kiss as it were. Then dropped 
them and turned and went. 

****** 

When she followed, he was gone; and her grand- 
mother and Miss Kitty were in the hall where they had 
come to say good-by. 


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She would have none of either of them. 

“I prefer to go to my room and be by myself.” 

Her eyes were quite dry; her face was composed. 
It so happened she ever afterward was spoken of as a 
beautiful young woman singularly without color. 


CHAPTER XVII 


T HE two women left standing in the hall gazed at 
one another, eyes meeting eyes. They had the 
air of creatures who in the midst of walls top- 
pling about them, crouch and flinch. 

Then Mrs. Wing began to tremble. “My lamb, my 
ewe lamb, the one thing I ever loved better than my- 
self !” 

And for the third time in her life she went into 
hysterics; once within two hours of her marriage to 
John Wing; again when the coffin arrived bringing 
from the battlefield of Chickamauga, the body of her 
only child. This time it was the dry-eyed cackling 
hysteria of age. 

Ellen Jackson appeared, with her Coptic cheek 
bones, and her authoritative voice, and between them 
they got her upstairs to her room and to bed. She 
raised on her pillow by and by, and clutched Kitty 
by the wrist. 

“I see it, I see what will happen. She’ll not visit 
it on Stephen. She’ll remember it, and visit it all her 
life on me !” 

“As she should!” said Kitty McKane. And shut 
her lips, lest she say any more. 

The old eyes, faded scraps of blue far back in their 
cavernous retreats, leaped to life, hot with fury. 

“I took you, Kitty McKane, the child of an emi- 
179 


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grant, a man who neither could read nor write, and 
made you!” 

“Neither can you say I’ve not been grateful !” said 
Miss McKane. 

****** 

Sometime in the forenight she called again for Kitty. 

“You’ve been at the telephone on this floor more 
than once this evening?” 

Miss McKane, blonde and grim, looked down upon 
her long-time patron, friend, and tyrant. The blonde- 
ness was achieved: the grimness was come from the 
handling through many years of a clientele of women. 

“You’re not to say ever again I haven’t paid my 
debt to you.” 

“What do you mean, Kitty McKane?” 

“After talking matters over with Mrs. Stephen Jan- 
vier, I got on the long distance with Mother Mary 
Gertrude at Our Lady. If Lucy will trust herself to 
me, we’re going down by train to her to-morrow.” 

Mrs. Wing reached out a hand and, finding the old- 
fashioned bell cord that hung at her head, jerked it 
again and again. 

Ellen appeared. 

“Call Henry; get on the stable telephone and tell 
him to dress, and bring the car to the door. Then help 
Miss Kitty here get her things together. She’s return- 
ing to her own home. Interfere, would you, Kitty 
McKane ? Set my own child, in my own house, against 
me? Philippa Janvier has no nearer made out her 
case in life than I have mine. And of the two of us, 
I’m the one whose eyes in behalf of women look 
beyond and ahead!” 

She was trembling ; weeping ; hiccoughing. And with 
these things terror came again upon her; the terror 


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1 8 1 


of a too feeble creature, who knows how slender is the 
hold that keeps her here. She clung anew, now to 
Kitty, now to Ellen, the two people in the world who 
could do the most with her. When they ceased their 
ministrations, it was into the night, and Mrs. Wing 
was asleep. 

****** 

It was three o’clock when Miss Kitty and Lucy left 
Ashe for the city, there to take the train. It was six 
o’clock, and the wintry dusk was closed down when, in 
the carryall belonging to the school, they reached the 
clustered buildings in their setting of snow-sprinkled 
lawn and bare shrubberies. 

The blow had struck at the very springs of Lucy’s 
being, and her face looked pinched and sharpened. 
Why she was here she could not have said. Kitty 
McKane who never failed her, had asked her to come. 

Of all the factors which may accompany unhappi- 
ness, inaction is the hardest to endure. Behind her, at 
the moment that Kitty proposed it, stretched a sleepless 
night; ahead of her was an impotent to-day. She 
shrank from seeing her grandmother, as from the per- 
son who too fiercely had sustained her. She could not 
bring her sore mind yet to contemplate meeting any of 
her own young friends who might come to her. She 
was here because it was easier to come than to stay. 
****** 
Mother Gertrude, as before, welcomed them in her 
office sitting room, serene, equable and portly. 

She took Lucy’s hands. “I thank you, dear child, 
for coming. And I thank Kitty for bringing you. 
Stephen came down the day before yesterday to say 
good-by. Anne and Charlie were with him. Shall I 
tell you what his farewell to me was ?” 


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The old nun laughed briskly. “Here are his words : 
t Au revoir, old sport. A happy reunion somehow, 
somewhere, sometime!’ ” 

She dropped Lucy’s hands. “And now I think you’ll 
both like to go to your rooms.” 

***** * 

Supper for the two guests was over. A coal fire 
blazed ruddy and clear in the grate of Mother Ger- 
trude’s sitting room. Little Sister Veronica, perpetu- 
ally and tenderly young, appeared at the door, and 
Miss Kitty arose and joined her. 

“We have,” she said to the Mother, “three months’ 
arrears of accumulated matters, large and small, to 
talk over. When Sister Veronica’s duties reclaim her, 
I’ll go to my room.” 

****** 

Left with Lucy, the old nun sighed. But she was 
resolute to come to the point. 

The girl was seated in an armchair. The firelight 
played on her features. The face was tense and set. 

“Poor, poor child; poor Stephen; poor both of you.” 

Pity dominated the voice. “I used to wonder why 
these things of the soul must be; heartbreak, renunci- 
ation, anguish; apart as they are from merited suffer- 
ing sprung from cardinal and willful sin. The question 
is unanswered for me; I wonder still.” 

She sighed. “Happiness, I’m more than convinced, 
is a factor in the spiritual growth of the individual, as 
potent as suffering. When I see what the sun will 
do for a puny seedling transplanted from the shade to 
an open border, I’m inclined to give the superior claim 
to happiness. It may be that our error is too much to 
consider the individual; the gain in fiber and in moral 


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183 


strength through the individual suffering may be to the 
race.” 

She brought a hand screen to the girl; an old- 
fashioned affair of wood, painted in flowers, and 
shellacked. 

She sat down. “I warn you, Lucy, that I’m 
going to preach. It’s my vocation, you see.” 

She smiled. “What else has three-score and ten to 
offer one score, but of its wisdom, fruit of its years? 
If wisdom it be? Lucy, it is as old as the eternal veri- 
ties, this struggle between man and woman. Give, 
child, give. It is the divine plan. Only those women 
who crucify their affections, find them. I speak as one 
who whatever the right or the wrong of her position, 
lost hers. Give, Lucy, I beg you. It is woman’s 
destiny.” 

She gazed at the stern young face. Her own face 
within its linen coif was thoughtful. Then she turned 
to the table beside her, and took up a red leather port- 
folio. It was worn and faded, and tied with yellowed 
tapes. There were some papers on the table, and a 
small leather-bound book. 

“At my solicitation, Anne sent these down to me by 
Kitty, who also brought you,” she smiled. “I only ask 
you hear me out, Lucy. I don’t promise that I’ll not 
be tedious.” 

She selected a page from here and there among the 
papers in the portfolio. “America’s truly great 
poet, I mean Whitman, calls our attention as a people, 
to an ever-present factor that we’re prone to forget. 
He says to us Americans, (} Tis not the Present only , 
the Past is also stored in thee / I want you to consider 
Stephen a bit, in the light of his past. I’ve some notes 


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here in my hand, made by myself years ago about some 
Janviers dead and gone; in this portfolio are the in- 
troductory pages of a memoir, never completed, begun 
by one Etienne Janvier in 1793, while in prison. This 
book, with its lock and key, is the journal of Julie 
Janvier, written somewhere about 1800, and dedicated 
to her husband. The characters on these pages are 
faded, and the French of that day is often a bit puz- 
zling. With your promise of patience, I’ll follow the 
story through the medium of my own old notes.” 

A Sister came in, and set down on a table near 
Lucy, a tray with sandwiches, and a glass of wine. 

“Ah, here it is.” Mother Gertrude nodded ap- 
proval. “Sister Hildegarde here, came to me a little 
ago, distressed and worried; she noticed in the refectory 
that you ate no supper.” 

The tall young Sister in her habit withdrew. A 
tear slid over Lucy’s lid and rolled down her cheek. 

The noises of the routine life beyond the door, 
reached the two; the sound of a bell; of a hymn sung 
by high, young voices; the rhythm of marching, retreat- 
ing feet. 

Against these evidences of the life outside, rose and 
fell the tones of her who in the world was Philippa 
Janvier, now narrating, now reading to Lucy. If at 
the start the face of the girl was passive, at the close 
it was cold and stern. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


((T *M asking you, Lucy, to hear the story of Etienne 
I Janvier, the Girondist; and of his sister, Julie, 
who the betrothed of her cousin, Charles Jan- 
vier, was herself in love with the young Louis Philippe, 
the son of the Duke of Orleans, the Jacobin, and revo- 
lutionist. How far these things went into the making 
of your Stephen, along with the usual tales that make 
life glorious to a boy, who shall say?” 

The old nun paused, sighed, then took her story up 
briskly again. “My own father was the oldest child 
of this Charles and Julie; and he told this same story 
to me often when I was a child. I sitting close against 
his knee, as my brother, fourteen years my senior, and 
who in time was to love Lucy Routt and lose her, had 
heard it before me. 

“I, in my turn, Lucy, a woman entered into orders, 
told it to the next two generations; to the two sons of 
this brother; and to your Stephen, and Charlie his 
cousin.” 

She sat erect. “There are two types of Janviers, 
and always have been; the sane, rational, cool-headed, 
and even cool-blooded Janvier. And the pure, the ex- 
alted, if you will, romantic. Julie Janvier was the pure 
romantic. Charles, her cousin, whom she married, was 
the rational. In Etienne, the brother, these traits met, 
making what I claim, is the highest expression of man- 
kind in any race — the romantic-realist! I glanced 

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through these old notes of mine while you were at 
supper, and I find that my narrative moves through 
Julie, the woman. Hers is the minor story. But it 
must go.” 

Lucy surveyed her Aunt Philippa. The old religi - 
euse saw her smile. 

“And what, my child?” 

“The age-old assumption that perforce the woman’s 
is the minor story. I for one already see that if 
rightly read, the woman’s never is!” 

“My dear, my dear; I see you indeed are Lucy 
Routt’s child! I will start with a fragment from the 
memoir of Etienne. What as history is trite to you 
and me, my dear, was to him as he set it down, new 
with the awfulness of the blood-price. Does it occur 
to you that your Stephen may regard it as a part of his 
heritage, to pay this blood price if necessary, again?” 

This time Lucy laughed bitterly. “And his son, and 
his son’s son in their turns, pay it again? However, 
get on with it, Aunt Philippa. I’ll be a listener.” 

“Thank you, my child. It’s not with the thought to 
win you to my view of life, that I ask you to hear me. 
But that I, perhaps, may bring you nearer to compre- 
hending the view of Stephen.” 

Again she picked up her story briskly. “This 
Etienne Janvier was a young avocat of Marseilles. He 
came of a Provengal family of means and standing, 
descended through one line, the Arnaulds, from the 
nobility. The ferment of modern ideas reached Mar- 
seilles early. He was an habitue of the clubs there, 
and also at Lyons, where he early became a protege 
of M. and Madame Roland, whose influence was wide 
and powerful. On the death of his parents, he re- 
moved to Paris, bringing with him his sister, Julie. 


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187 


“He tells us In the opening paragraphs of his me- 
moir, and as it seems to us now naively, that ‘Rous- 
seau, the Encyclopedia, Voltaire, the cafes, and the 
clubs, had done their work among the young men of 
France * He adds that ‘if ever circumstances were 
favorable to revolution, it was then. The misery of 
the French people, the character of Louis XVI, the 
American Revolution, the ferment of ideas generally, 
alike were factors.’ 

“So it was, he assures us, ‘that a faith of new con- 
victions had awakened, sufficient to strengthen the 
young men of France to face death for their princi- 
ples!’ His explanation for this being that ‘it lifted 
their minds above the common-day life and its values 
and affairs/’ 

“The sister, Julie, in her journal written ten years 
later, describes him : 

“ ‘Le bel homme f my brother often was called among 
his friends. He was older than I, being twenty-three 
at this time. His eyes set wide apart, were smiling and 
yet piercing. His voice seemed to come from a pas- 
sionate soul, yet to the accompaniment of a manner 
tranquil and humorous. He had a lofty forehead and 
full, an eagle-keen and distinguished profile; and a 
mouth truly sensitive even in repose. The whole 
glowed with an ardor at once of fire and of intelligence; 
and bloomed with the lingering touch of adolescent 
youth. His dress, according to the hour, was foppish; 
his curling hair falling to his shoulders; a tasseled cane 
forever in his hand!’ ” 

The old mother paused. “I take up my own narra- 
tive here again, Lucy. Established in Paris, Etienne’s 
rooms became the gathering place for certain young 
men, among these his cousin Charles Janvier, a subal- 


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tern in the school of engineers, the son of General 
Simon Hippolyte Arnauld Janvier. Caught into the 
vortex of thought to which Etienne introduced him, 
both at his own rooms and at the clubs, the day came 
when Charles knew and avowed himself for what 
Stephen stood declared, a Girondist. 

“Here is a sentence from Etienne’s memoir concern- 
ing these gatherings: ‘In the conversations of the 
young men of France, was born the spirit of the revo- 
lution.’ ” 

Lucy. — I promised I would listen. But where in 
these conversations breeding revolution, was the voice 
of the young women? What of Julie? Get on, Aunt 
Philippa, I’ll be good. 

Mother Gertrude. — Among the young men who 
frequented the rooms of Etienne, was the son of the 
Due d’Orleans, the Due de Chartres. Etienne describes 
him as a serious and shrewd boy, of prodigious mem- 
ory and fine accomplishments; these last due to his early 
gouverneur, Madame de Genlis. He was seventeen 
years of age. “The Girondes,” comments Etienne 
proudly, “were the contribution to the world of 
youth!” 

Lucy.- — And this young man’s training and accom- 
plishments, as you’ve just said, were the contribution 
through him to the world of a woman , his early gouv- 
erneur. Where in these councils were the women who 
had mothered these young men? Forgive me, and 
proceed. 

Mother Gertrude. — Julie, who lived with her 
brother, and with the assistance of an elderly woman 
servant, kept his home, also was seventeen. 

Lucy. — As always; kept his house. 


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Mother Gertrude. — The brother writes of her: 
“My sister at seventeen was young, radiant; with 
intelligence, and the gift of laughter. Her air was 
tantalizing, with something illusive in her poise, and 
in her quick and airy movements. Her voice and man- 
ner were agreeable, and she had a gift of conversation, 
pleasing through an ability to see that which was amus- 
ing in the world around her.” 

Julie says of herself: “I was a smiling petite; gay 
and frolicsome; not at any time of my life sensual; 
but delighting to please, and to shine. ‘ Nymphe / my 
cousin Charles in those days called me. ' Intrigante / 
and ' mignonne y y my sometimes vexed brother.’’ 

The young Louis Philippe and Julie being thrown 
together, the boy for the time being fell in love with 
her. And she, yielding — so she tells us — “to his 
youth and his quaint seriousness,” fell in love with 
him for all time. She says concerning him that “if he 
ran with the Girondists by conviction, through caution 
he united with the Jacobins, with whom his father con- 
sorted; the father being accused of affiliating with all 
creeds for purposes of his own.” We have her word 
that the son was honest. 

Lucy. — If she says so, we’ll admit it. Still it’s dis- 
turbing to our faith that he “for the time being fell in 
love with her.” 

Mother Gertrude. — It was the autumn of 1789. 
The fourteenth of July, the fall of the Bastille was 
three months’ past. The old municipality of Paris was 
swept away, and a new Paris militia under Lafayette, 
had taken its place. The tricolor had come into exist- 
ence, the red and blue — she tells us — were the old colors, 
of Paris; and the white stood for the new. 


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Lucy. — She seems intelligent. Fairly able to formu- 
late an opinion. 

Mother Gertrude. — It was October, and the Ja- 
cobins, whose powers were increasing, were beginning 
to take the lead in the affairs of the more advanced of 
the revolutionists. Affiliated now throughout France, 
they were become indeed the rivals of the Girondes. 
Marseilles, the home of Etienne and Julie, was the 
stronghold of the Girondes outside of Paris. 

Etienne came to Julie. Her account follows: “Said 
my brother, ‘Marseilles has sent to Paris for leaders. 
Barbaroux needs help. The fact that it is my native 
place led to me being chosen. Charles goes with us. 
He is open to arrest at any moment here. Our uncle 
has been recalled by the king, together with the com- 
panies under him, forming the garrison at Corsica. He 
will be the first, if I know him, to apprehend his rene- 
gade son. Get together such things as the three of 
us are obliged to have. We leave to-night by the Paris 
and Marseilles coach.’ ” 

Lucy. — Hers but to obey. 

Mother Gertrude. — She tells us that her heart 
grew cold and still. That she ventured to speak: 
“And the Due de Chartres? He was to join us here 
at supper this evening?” She adds that “Etienne was 
obstinately, was it perversely, blind?” And gives us 
his reply: “ ‘I confided to you the rumor touching his 
father. It is verified. Philippe Egalite has been com- 
pelled by Lafayette to leave France. He has taken 
refuge in England. The boy is in good standing with 
the Girondists, and will not be molested. For reasons 
of our own, he is aligned for the time with the Jacobins. 
Indeed he is the doorkeeper this afternoon at the Jaco- 
bin Club in rue St. Honore, the members taking this 


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191 


honor in rotation; old ’Sieur Lais, the opera singer, 
being the other; I will see that a message reaches him 
there.’ ” 

Julie’s preparations for the journey being completed, 
she tells us that she took her old woman servant, and 
thus attended, went to the Church of St. Roche. Wait- 
ing here, she sent the woman to the rue St. Honore 
with instructions to approach the entrance of the Jaco- 
bin gathering place, and if possible, obtain speech with 
Louis Philippe. 

Lucy. — She had initiative. She knew her mind. 
She could act. 

Mother Gertrude. — He returned with the woman, 
coming himself to St. Roche. She describes him: “He 
was grave both of aspect and of speech, but as I see 
now, a boy. He wore a coat of green, I remember well, 
with silver embroidery; not showy, indeed on the whole 
somber; and the cockade of red, blue, and white. But 
the features of his face, the gravity of his eyes joined 
to their youthful clarity; the fineness of his skin and his 
pronounced pallor; these remained with me rather than 
his dress. I had given him my heart, and at that time, 
I, the daughter of a Marseilles avocat, held hi9. 

“He joined me in the church, and took my hand. 
We withdrew further within the shadows of the nave 
of the church. He spoke from a full heart.” Le 
coeur saouly she puts it. “ ‘Because I love you well, 
Julie,’ he told me, ‘I love my honor the more. Thefe 
are times when fortune begins but cannot complete her 
work. We young men of France are sworn to forego 
ease, joy, happiness, life itself, for the future of the 
State. We will meet again, you and I. I feel it. My 
father is in jeopardy, and I hardly know where for 
safety, I myself stand. If in the meanwhile our hearts 


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fail us, yours, Julie, and mine, let us remember to say, 
It is for France ” 

Lucy. — The generations repeat themselves, I, too, 
begin to see. 

Mother Gertrude. — The cousins left Paris that 
night by — as she describes it — the lumbering Paris and 
Marseilles coach; taking their way down through the 
Rhone valley, through Lyons and Avignon, to Mar- 
seilles. Julie pictures the misery of the country and 
the people, seen as they journeyed. 

Lucy. — A man-made country; under a man-made 
rule. 

Mother Gertrude. — A word should be said here 
about the third traveler, Charles Janvier, the runaway 
subaltern. Julie writes of him ten years later: “My 
husband, now in his thirties, is five feet eleven; slim, 
erect, with composed features, and observant eyes; a 
musician; a noted dancer; an intrepid horseman, as is 
expected of all men here in America. Pleasing in man- 
ner, but cool and rational in his views.” 

Lucy. — She loved the boy, you see ! 

Mother Gertrude. — Arrived at Marseilles, the 
cousins took a house in the poorest quarter of the city; a 
locality as far removed as might be from the former 
home of Etienne and Julie, which they had inherited 
and still owned. She refers to this former home, speak- 
ing of the geraniums and roses, the oranges and lemons, 
crepe myrtles and pomegranates, in its garden. She 
enumerates various of the household treasures that had 
been left behind. 

Lucy. — I say nothing to this. 

Mother Gertrude. — She speaks of the miserable 
quarters they saw fit to occupy. “We were extremely 


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193 


ill-lodged. We had no place where we could make 
a fire on account of the ill draught of the chimney. Our 
small cooking was done on a brazier. We dreaded 
to think of the approaching winter. The court in which 
our miserable home stood was the muddiest, the evilest. 
There was no place I could take a walk, neither gar- 
den, nor decent street near by; only alleys very evil. 
We were shivering already under the mistral, that 
violent and cold northwest wind that afflicts Marseilles. 
Etienne and Charles maintained that it was necessary 
we be thus in obscurity here, avoiding our former sur- 
roundings; holding that their work could be pursued 
with less attendant dangers so.” 

In the cellar of the old rookery whose ground floor 
they rented, the two young men set up a hand printing 
press. Etienne wrote boldly. And issuing forth to the 
cafes, talked as boldly as did the pamphlets which 
now began to issue from the press in the cellar. Al- 
ways, Julie tells us, the two young men were gay; and 
she with them. She quotes her brother: “If we are 
issuing our death warrants, we have the satisfaction of 
knowing that we also are furnishing matter for his- 
tory; history in the making such as never has been 
before. Hitherto, Julie, your brother and your cousin 
have befen content to study the history of France; now 
they make it! If we fail; if the time is not ripe in 
France; America is waiting for us and you.” 

She did the household work for the three. She tells 
that ab'out this time she opened her heart to her brother. 
As she expresses it: “Being in one of those fullnesses 
of heart common to those who love, I yielded to the 
desire and owned to my brother my love for the young 
Louis Philippe. ‘Our fathers, my own and my cousin’s, 


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arranged long since that I should marry Charles, 
Etienne; and I have given my heart where I cannot 
hope to marry!’ ” 

Lucy. — Had arranged that she ! Again I’ll 

say no word. 

Mother Gertrude. — Etienne comforted her: 
“Egalite, Julie, is a magic word. But it cannot make 
the impossible possible. Did you suppose I did not 
see? Did not comprehend? This is a sun of too great 
magnitude, that for you will never set.” 

In the records of these twenty months passed at 
Marseilles, Julie speaks twice again of the young Due 
de Chartres. One reference is to a letter from him, 
conveyed to her by the hand of a fellow Gironde com- 
ing to Marseilles. The other reference is to a visit 
paid by him to Marseilles, in company with Condorcet, 
marquis, philosopher, and Girondist. Julie and he 
met at this time — and parted. As she says: “With 
a sense on my part now of the finality of the unhappy 
enterprise; and a submission within me perforce to the 
inevitable.” 

Life in the wretched surroundings went on. Says 
Julie: “Etienne or my cousin, would take me abroad 
with them. I loved the waterside where the Mediter- 
ranean trading ships with their lateen sails, were 
crowded together in this, the greatest port in France. 
Every language known to a sailor was heard here. At 
other times, I went by myself to the old Cathedral, be- 
loved of me since my earliest childhood. My father 
had told me that it superseded a temple of Diana, and 
that temple had replaced an altar to Baal. I do not 
know if this be more than legend. It conduced how- 
ever, to reverie and reflection, as I sat there on the 
hired stool in the shadows, hidden away in the obscurity, 


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i95 


for fear of recognition by some friend or neighbor of 
former days. Thus the winter, a summer, and another 
winter, passed.” 

At Paris the fortunes of king, Girondes, and Jaco- 
bins, continued to rise, fall and contest. At Marseilles 
the work by pamphlet, and the work by word of mouth, 
went on. In Strassburg, on the frontier of Alsace, a 
young Captain of Engineers was quartered. His name 
was Rouget de l’lsle. The cafes and clubs of Paris had 
known him, as well as the rooms of Etienne Janvier in 
Paris. Like the other young men wont to gather 
there, he was a Girondist. 

In May, 1792, on an evening at dark, a tap came 
at the street-door of the rookery in the court. Etienne 
and Charles vanished. They waited these days to be 
sure. Julie opened the door. Rouget de l’lsle came 
in, throwing off the cloak that muffled him. He wore 
the tricolor, was in his uniform, and had his sword. 
She describes him: “What boursoufie trempe was 
here ! What flaming petulance ! What reckless rest- 
lessness! Rouget de l’lsle was neither too fat nor 
too thin, and had a leg he was frankly proud of. He 
walked consciously, had a pronounced air, a thick nose, 
and heavy eyebrows. In character he was volatile, 
but also obliging and generous. He liked to harangue, 
and at base was sound and logical, if one had the pa- 
tience always to hear him out. Nature had denied him 
those external gifts to accompany a heart and talents 
that delighted in the tragic role. The manner of him 
detracted from the poet. We who knew him loved 
him and exalted him for what he really was.” 

“He greeted her: ‘Courage, my little Julie, cour- 
age ! C’est bieri, yes, it is well P ” 

“Etienne and Charles reappeared, and the four pro- 


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196 


ceeded to gather about the meal which the knock had 
interrupted. The guest explained his appearance : 

“ l Helas, my friends, all that I do is as good as 
nothing. I am in double jeopardy, and fled to you, 
having your letter, Etienne, sent by hand to me some 
time since. Behold in me a unique; an original; one 
who as yet has not been copied ! For long I have been 
in peril because I am a Gironde revolutionist ; to-day 
I come to you from Strassburg, suspended from my 
rank, spewed forth by my Gironde brethren, because of 
the too revolutionary nature of my views ! 

“ ‘I am in a pitiable state,’ ” he told them, “ ‘from 
the exigencies of flight, the wretchedness of accommo- 
dation, and the condition of the roads. Let us set to, 
tout a I’heure, some of all, salad, cheese, bread, wine.’ ” 

“In his own good time,” she tells us, “he threw back 
his head with its flowing, curling locks, and laughed 
petulantly. 

“ ‘Here’s the boiling. A column of volunteers was 
about to leave Strassburg for the Girondin ranks in 
Paris. The Girondin ministry and Roland deposed, 
our armies from the districts are our only hope. I 
agreed on the eve of their going, to write a song in 
their honor. Leave us to do in good faith those things 
that take us by the soul! Yielding to my convictions 
and my emotions, I wrote the words, and set them to 
music, at a single sitting! 

“ ‘At the banquet I arose; about me, le maire f the 
citizens, the soldiers; the tricolor everywhere. I looked 
around on the company, their set faces, their great 
ardor. Having come thus far along the road of revo- 
lution, I asked myself, shall they not come further? 

“ ‘Throwing down my challenge, and my defiance, I 


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poured out my soul in the words I had that day ad- 
dressed alike to France and to this column of volun- 
teers about to march away to take up arms for her 
deliverance. I called my song “Chant de l’armes du 
Rhin ” * ” 

And here Julie says, “Rouget arose, looking around 
upon us there at the board; flushed alike with his emo- 
tion, and with the good Provengal wine : 

“ ‘Listen, my comrades, my friends; listen, mignonne 
Julie, and say if indeed it is not the song of France? 
The hymn for all time of the oppressed against the 
tyrant and the oppressor? My soul flamed as I thought 
on the wrongs of France, and thus it spoke: 

“His voice,” she says, “in a clear uplifted tenor, 
rang forth: 

Allons, enfants de la patrie, 

Le jour de gloire est arrive! 

Contre nous de la tyrannie 
L’etendard sanglant est leve, 

L’etendard sanglant est leve ! 

Entendez-vous dans les campagnes, 

Mugir ces feroces soldats? 

Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras 
Egorger nos fils, nos compagnes 

Aux armes, citoyens! formez vos bataillons! 
Marchons, marchons! 

Qu’un sang impur abreuve nos sillons! 

Nous entrerons dans la carriere, 

Quand nos aines n’y seront plus, 

Nous y trouverons leur poussiere 
Et la trace de leurs vertus! 

Et la trace de leurs vertus! 


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Bien moins jaloux de leur survivre, 

Que de partager leur cercueil, 

Nous aurons le sublime orgueil 
De les venger ou de les suivre. 

Aux armes, citoyens! etc. 

As he ceased,” she continues, “tears were streaming 
down his face, and he sank backward into his chair. 
The three of us for a long moment were silent; then 
rising, we surrounded and embraced him. 

“Etienne spoke: ‘Friend of my soul! Comrade! 
It is the song of France, the hymn of the people ! And 
they shall have it!’ ” 

The next day the three young men set to work at 
the press in the cellar. And straightway the words of 
fire written by Rouget de l’lsle began to appear on rude 
handbills, in the cafes of Marseilles, and at the clubs; 
and for circulation through the villages, and the 
country around. 

The time was ripe. The hour was come. France, 
awake alike to her peril from foe at home, from 
emigre and foreign intervention abroad, called to her 
children. Appealed to them for an army of volunteers 
to support the assembly. Marseilles responded. 

The memoir of Etienne speaks now. “Forward ye 
patriots ! The cry comes in the words and writing of 
Barbaroux, our deputy. ‘Send me six hundred men 
who know how to die; qui savent mourir! 1 ” 

“Marseilles gets her sons together,” so history and 
the historian better known than Etienne, tells us. “Five 
hundred and seventeen men, with Captains of fifties 
and tens; muskets on shoulders, sabers on thighs, with 
three pieces of cannon. And with these that weapon 
of the emotions and the loftier passions, the hymn of 


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Rouget de l’Isle ! Dusty of face, this black-browed 
company, with frugal refreshment, plodding onward; 
not to be turned aside; three weeks on the journey up 
to Paris!” 

With them went Etienne and Charles Janvier. And 
with these went also a camp follower; a lad with soft 
eyes not lacking humor, and slender limbs; one Julie 
Arnauld Janvier. She tells of it. “It was arranged by 
my brother that I should go to Soeur Marie Rose, our 
ancient cousin, superior of the nursing sisters in the old 
Hotel Dieu, and with her make my asylum until such 
time as the one or the other, brother or cousin, should 
return for me. I permitted them to believe that I 
acquiesced in this arrangement. When I appeared in 
my boy’s disguise, lusty as many among the crowds 
that everywhere gathered to welcome and even for a 
time accompany them, near a day’s journey from Mar- 
seilles, what could they do? How deny my defense? 
‘Shall I be denied a free wing, then, because I am a 
woman? By you, the apostles of freedom? } ” Les aile 
des champs, she puts it. “ ‘Shall / not make history as 
well as you?’ ” 

Lucy. — So women asked it then, too, Aunt Philippa? 
It all depends on how we interpret your pretty story, 
you see. 

Mother Gertrude. — It was July, hot summer 
weather. She depicts the journeying: “Some wore 
the red cap of liberty with the tricolor rosette; some 
a cockaded hat with a feather. Many stuck branches 
of trees in the barrels of their muskets to shield them 
from the fierce sun. A banner was at our head which 
said, ‘The RIGHTS of Man.’ The drum marked our 
steps, and we sang as we marched, always the same 
words, the hymn of Rouget de l’lsle, 


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Allons, enfants de la patrie 

Aux armes, citoyens! 

“And as quickly as the crowds along the way could 
catch the words, they shouted back : 

Aux armes, citoyens ! 

“To Avignon, to Lyons, past the Rhone we jour- 
neyed; many joining us as we went; a chanting host; 
their blood to be the first of the liberators to pay the 
price of the liberty they demanded.” 

A third verse was added to their hymn by these 
Marseilles Girondins, and was sung first, as the first 
of them so to die, went their way to the guillotine. 

“We reached Paris, and on August io, led the attack 
on the Tuileries. September 21, the Girondins, the 
party of ideas f not of political confusion, were out of 
power. 

“That winter to follow, what can I say of this 
period?” writes Julie. “When no man knew at morn- 
ing what his fate would be before night! On January 
17, the convention decreed the king’s death. 

“That night the Due de Chartres sought us in our 
rooms. For he and my brother again were in conclave. 
That night he wept ; he stormed ; pacing the floor. Torn 
with a thousand violent emotions, the past fought with- 
in him with the present! He called his father, the 
Due d’Orleans, traitor and Cain. Again he wept, and 
called him patriot. Philippe Egalite, his father, that 
day had voted for the death of his cousin, the king! 
The reign of terror, of confusion was begun.” 

Mother Mary Gertrude pushed her notes upon the 
table from her, and turned her regard on Lucy: 


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“There is not much more to tell. Etienne paid his 
part of the price of what he believed in. He died on 
the guillotine in October, 1793. 

u ‘All Paris is out,’ Julie writes concerning this day. 
‘Such a crowd as even in these days rarely is seen. 
Bareheaded are the inmates of the carts, hands bound.’ 

“She, with Charles beside her, presses closer to the 
wheel of the cart conveying her brother, and, in 
her lad’s clothing, runs beside. She tells us that it was 
‘a day of delicate drizzle and lowering darkness. My 
brother spoke to me, who had not seen him since his 
arrest, six weeks before, looking not at me, but ahead, 
his words reaching me as I hurried along, one with 
the press and the mob.’ 

“ ‘He mentioned a street, a house. “Our friend who 
is there is supposed to be in safety within the Austrian 
lines. Aid him to Switzerland, if so be it you and 
Charles can, where his sister and others await him. 
You will then put him forever out of your thoughts.” ’ 
“ ‘Etienne, looking ahead, spoke to my cousin at my 
elbow. “Take her to America, Charles. She has her 
fortune, of whose disposition you know, and such as 
remains of mine. Love her and cherish her. And 
through the children she bears you in the western re- 
public, sons and daughters, see to it that our blood shall 
march on, march on, with the people !” ’ 

“ ‘Ten minutes later,’ she writes, ‘his head, those 
eyes humorous yet piercing, that forehead noble and 
full, that mouth sensitive even in repose, falls into the 
basket. The eloquent, the young, the beautiful and 
the brave !’ 

“It lay within the power of Charles and Julie prac- 
tically to further the plans of the young Due d’Orleans 


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to reach Switzerland, ‘where,’ she adds, ‘under the 
name of Corby, he set about earning a living for him- 
self, teaching mathematics.’ 

“She speaks again here of her love for this young 
man. ‘Many enter the temple of love, stay a brief 
hour and come out, to think they know love. Love is 
greater than that. Its vigils are long and sorrowful. 
Its rewards brief — the speaking of soul to soul in the 
long-held meeting of eyes with eyes; the lingering of 
fingers within fingers; in handclasps all too brief; the 
shuddering ecstasy of a final embrace; of lips seeking 
lips at parting. Gallant, young, tender, beautiful; star 
of another magnitude for all my prayers and all my 
hoping; Egalite, my heart’s king, and my love ! I see, 
helas , that fraternity and equality, too, have their re- 
stricted meanings !’ 

“Four years later, and for the last time in her life, 
Julie Janvier again saw Louis Philippe. An exile, he 
was traveling with his brothers in America. Chatelaine 
she now was in her husband’s home in Kentucky; the 
mother of his child, my father; the great-great-grand- 
mother of your Stephen to be, Lucy. 

“ ‘He knew my heart,’ she writes. ‘I had come to 
see that happiness is ephemeral, but goodness is eter- 
nal. Had come to concede that those principles alone 
shall endure that are of that lofty nature for which 
we are willing to pay the price. I, who had seen how 
many young men of France go smiling to their deaths, 
the price of principle, could do no less. My ultimate 
sin in the flesh was the kiss that I, of myself, offered 
to him at parting.’ ” 

* * * * * * 

The routine of the schoolday was begun when, the 
next morning, Lucy came out of her room and sought 


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Mother Gertrude and Miss Kitty. They looked at 
her as she came in the sit’ting room. 

“I want to take the next train to town, Aunt Philippa. 
I’m following Stephen to New York, and I’m asking 
Kitty here and now to go with me. My idea is, if he 
still desires it, to marry him before he sails.” 

She out-flung a protesting hand, she in ordinary a 
person of few gestures. 

“Oh, don’t mistake me, either of you. I’m moved 
by no heroics. As for that, I see that if men can die 
for an idea, a woman is expected to live for one ! And 
I see too that woman must decide for herself. 
Nothing that you can show me will so remain as the 
terror inspired in me by the picture not alone of your 
Julie of Marseilles, required to live on without her 
lover; but the thought of you yourself, as you say you 
have, Aunt Philippa; and of grandmother; and in an- 
other sense, of Stephen’s own mother! I see nothing 
in your Julie’s story but that her life was cut to its pat- 
tern for her, not by her ; by a father, a brother, a lover, 
a cousin. I see, again, that the thread of her happiness 
was cut for Mrs. Helen Janvier, by another, her hus- 
band. I see that grandmother who rebelled, paid never- 
theless, even as you paid, too. I shall follow Stephen, 
and I shall take from life such as I may!” 


CHAPTER XIX 


W HEN Lucy arrived at home late that after- 
noon her tickets were bought, her reserva- 
tions made, and telegrams sent to Stephen 
and his mother, and to Warrington Adams. Pausing 
only to drop her outer coat, and remove her hat, she 
went to her grandmother’s room. 

She sat down beside this person, making room for 
herself on the edge of the ponderous bed. The face 
of Mrs. Wing looked a thousand years old as it gazed 
from the pillow searchingly and inquiringly; but a fire 
yet unquenchable burned in the eyes. 

“Grandmother, I’m going to Stephen. Don’t, don’t 
look at me so! We each have to arrive for ourselves. 
I don’t see it as he does, and likely never shall, but I 
intend to marry him nevertheless. Grandmother* be 
kind; you’ve always been kind. Allow that it’s my 
right to decide. Say that since I have decided, you 
agree that I may go !” 

“So? Man and his war? They’ve conquered you 
too! As with the rest, lover, husband, son, grandson; 
so now the great-grandchild is taken from me! I’ve 
lived bitter and lonely; bitter and lonely, I see, I’m 
to die!” 

Suddenly with this her fury mounted; and thrusting 
at Lucy as though to have her gone, she began to call 
for Kitty McKane. 


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205 


“Is she here? Has she too returned? Send her 
to me !” 

She was groping about her for her cane, which it 
was her habit and her whim forever to keep near her. 

Kitty from her room near by came hurrying in, her 
hat not yet removed from her blonde head. 

A glance by her at Mrs. Wing as she approached, 
and she issued curt commands to Lucy. 

“Go; I ask you to; I promise to call you when I 
think wiser; go, please; leave her to me.” 

She even caught Lucy by the shoulder, urging her 
away. 

She heard her go; heard the door close; saw the 
groping hand of the enraged old woman in the bed, find 
at last, and seize the cane; saw her raise it, and with a 
strength born of her fury, lay about her with it, striking 
blindly in the direction of Kitty. 

The fury ebbed, spent by its own violence, and with 
it sped the cruelly overexcited strength. The panting 
old creature fell back, face amid the pillows, spent and 
exhausted; the eyes alone still proclaiming their ani- 
mosity and rage. 

“It’s because of women such as you, Kitty McKane, 
who see man through romance, and because of women 
such as Philippa Janvier, who see woman through ab- 
negation, that we women are where we are ! and Man 
in the counsels of the courts of the world still is the only 
and the final word !” 

****** 

Lucy and Miss Kitty took their train at Ashe the 
next morning, walking by choice through the woodland 
and the village to the station. 

The matted grass bordering the woodland footpath 
was beaded with hoar frost. At the bridge some dank 


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and rotting ferns dripped hoary moisture upon the 
wet, dead leaves below them. The air was aromatic 
but cold. Lucy shivered. 

They passed out the gateway. The village street 
ahead looked unreal and unfamiliar. 

Lucy saw Mr. Simpson, the butcher, in the doorway 
of his shop. Lonnie on his bicycle passed her, return- 
ing from aiding his brother deliver the morning papers. 
It occurred to her that she should have telephoned 
Bennie Harlan and said good-by. 

They reached the station. The beech trees which 
overtopped it were beaded, too, and dripped. Henry 
and Jerry were here with the bags and the two 
trunks. The eastbound train came to a halt beside the 
platform. 

A little later Lucy sat staring out on the hurrying 
landscape of bare cornfields, woodlands, house yards, 
way stations. Miss Kitty was putting away hats and 
settling bags and magazines. 

Lucy heard herself sigh; a shuddering, terrified sigh. 
Now that she was here and started, she would have 
the train make speed. Since she was agreed with her- 
self to take as much of life as offered, she would make 
passionate haste toward the light before the door 
should close upon her, and shut her out. 

****** 

At noon the next day she followed Miss Kitty 
through the train shed, a straight young creature in a 
suit of leaf-brown, furs, and a small, winged hat. 

She recognized two faces at the front of the throng 
beyond the gate, Stephen and Warrington Adams; 
then saw Helen Janvier and Mr. Stephen Janvier, 
standing by them. 

For Warrington, her long-time friend, it was as if 


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he were not there. Aware of him, she forgot him. 

She had no plans; what Stephen would expect of her 
she had no idea; when he would sail she did not know; 
whether, in view of her coming, he would delay his 
sailing she did not ask. Stepping through the gate and 
finding him with a stride upon her, she met his eyes, 
sighed, shivered, and to this extent that she would take 
what she might, surrendered. 



PART II 


“Yet in me lies 

Part of the future of the race.” 



CHAPTER XX 


L UCY WING JANVIER, twenty-four years old, 
avidly read the cabled war news as she drank 
her morning coffee on the porch, the sun playing 
through the honeysuckle on the silver, glass and china 
before her. She checked a sob in the midst of a para- 
graph by Philip Gibbs. She feared and hated him, 
incomparable war-correspondent, and British master of 
English ; who brought home as no one else, the mise en 
scene of war. Yet she lived from day to day for the 
papers, which would give her here in Kentucky his 
latest word from the front; for the racking of her 
soul, on the principle of tormenting one’s own wound. 

The German Chancellor’s peace offer had reached 
Washington a week ago. On October 5, five days since, 
America replied through her president. The cabled 
letter from Gibbs in Lucy’s newspaper of to-day, written 
in the midst of the scenes it described, and dated Oc- 
tober 9, was headed as usual, “At the Front.” 

The October morning was mild, with a blue haze 
and a smell of burning leaves, pungent and aromatic. 
Thomas Harris, knowing her as a father the child, and 
like a parent occasionally indulging her, this morning 
placed her breakfast on a silver tray that in its years 
of usefulness in the household outdated him; and sum- 
moning her, served it on the south end of the porch. 

She inherited him, as it were, from her grandmother, 
who was dead these three years; and with him, his wife, 
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Viola, who was the cook, Ellen Jackson, and Jerry. 
The four were gray-haired, set in their ways, and not a 
little tyrannical and trying. But for them, nevertheless, 
she would be put to it for service; as households were 
generally. 

The hand holding the newspaper fell nerveless to 
her lap. She oftentimes asked herself if this Philip 
Gibbs, in the obsession with the thing he and his gifts 
were at the front for, setting down war in terms that 
are epic, grasped that it was the wives, mothers, and 
sweethearts, of the men fighting in the hell he por- 
trayed, who each morning were stretched anew on the 
crucifix of his words. 

Did she say wives? She did not know if she were 
wife or widow. Her husband, Stephen, had gone to 
France in 1915, and for a time had driven an ambu- 
lance. Entering a Flying Squadron, it was his idea to 
be transferred to his own flag when his country came 
into the war. In twenty months, she had had one of- 
ficial word concerning him, “Missing.” 

She remembered the day the word came. She did 
not cry at all, but remained still and motionless; appar- 
ently not suffering in the least. Then little by little it 
came upon her, acute and torturing, clutching her by the 
heart, and shaking her to and fro. For in her first 
despair she accepted it that Stephen was dead; and she 
never would see him again. 

She was overwhelmed by terror, not of the pain of 
the present, nor by that immediately to come; but by 
the black misery of the future. She was vigorous; she 
might live to her three score and ten; a feeling of an- 
guish seized her at the thought of these years to be met 

For weeks her grief threw a confused and heavy dis- 
tress into her brain. The cloud of her apathy then 


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213 


began to lift, and one day, with no volition of her own, 
her heart began to beat with an immoderate sudden 
hope. Stephen was amazingly sound in his headwork. 
The common sense of the Janviers would save him in 
any crisis where a cool head and tireless nerve would 
count. She laughed aloud at this point, rejoicing 
madly. 

Since then she waited with that sense of expectancy 
which persists so long as there is room for hope at all; 
a persistency which refused to believe that the worst 
could be her portion ; that, when she awoke each morn- 
ing, helped her to face the day, and, when she lay down 
at night, slept with her upon her pillow. Until now 
every human process in her seemed numb, but the one 
of waiting. 

It was October, 1918. Millions were dead, wounded 
and missing, since that word coming to her and enter- 
ing her heart like the fragment of glass which pierced 
the bosom of the maiden in the old tale, turned her to 
ice and froze her tears at their source. 

She was young to be an ice-maiden; a creature at 
twenty-four — if indeed Stephen be dead — for whom 
life henceforth was a shadow, a dream, a mockery of 
rising and troubling memories. Buoyed up though she 
was by the sense of waiting, she suffered ceaselessly. 
She was deep of chest and long of limb, ample if slender 
of hip; built by nature to be the mother of children. 
And, oh, God, endowed with the ardent cries, the calls 
of the body, all the passionate needs of a normal 
woman for her lover and husband. The scion of a 
long line of forbears; rich; in herself not meagerly 
endowed; twenty-four years old; and this her portion, 
the man she loved missing! 

She had one child. Little Stephen, this November 


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just ahead, would be three years old. Her lips hard- 
ened. As deliberately as though in the precision of 
the act she proved herself to her satisfaction, she lifted 
the squat and round-bodied coffee pot, and refilled her 
cup. 

She did not love her child! She feared love too much 
to permit herself to love him! Love is agony ; love is 
bondage to a cruel taskmaster; love is a prisoner tor- 
tured under whip and chains. These four years since 
she was twenty had taught her this. 

She would not give herself a hostage to fate again 
through love, this time for her child. Conceived in 
the anguish of parting from her husband, to whom she 
had been married those short weeks; carried in the 
months of mad yearning for him; born at the time the 
forces in Flanders were being gassed, a departure in 
warfare new to a horrified world; her husband one of 
the victims for aught she knew; every step of the way 
of her motherhood, then and since, had been stations 
from a Gethsemane of parting to a Golgotha called 
‘‘Missing.” 

She dared not allow herself to love the little warm, 
supine body, laid beside her in the big, square bed in 
the room upstairs, that November day three years ago. 
A baby whose mother lay staring at him, mad for 
him, shaken to her soul by a passion of longing, and 
not permitting herself to touch him. 

Her son was a big boy now, a strapping baby, the 
servants said; an upstanding little fellow, all gayety, 
happiness, and busy preoccupation. Quite a little man, 
he walked prattling beside her about the yard, in the 
garden, along the footpaths, through the fields. She 
saw to her farm herself, directing such farm hands 
as she could hire. 


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215 


The child as he made the rounds with her chattered 
of the sky, of the flowers; of the field larks rising with 
a rush from the clover at his feet; of the minnows 
darting like gleams of silver about the shady pools and 
rock bottoms of the creek. Sometimes he would rush 
ahead of her in pursuit of some winged creature, a 
moth or butterfly; a joy of being in his every act and 
movement such as revolted Lucy. Often she experi- 
enced so terrible an emotion as to stand helpless, 
choked; her hand seeking her throat. 

Such a love of life and living had marked the older 
Stephen. Who when he left her, at twenty-seven still 
was gloriously and outrageously the child and the boy, 
beneath the exterior of his manhood. 

She brought her hand down upon the call bell on the 
tray; a bell in the quaint semblance of a figure of a 
crouching wounded Hessian soldier; made from bullion 
in Lexington, Kentucky, ninety-five years before, for 
one spendthrift John Henry Wing, by a journeyman 
silversmith ; along with certain other household articles 
in silver. A Hessian soldier ! Symbol alike of a peo- 
ple’s hatred, and of two peoples at war ! Shall we for- 
ever perpetuate these things better forgot! 

Her breakfast was within the war-time concessions. 
In those glad, mad days of Stephen’s love-making, he 
told her with an assumption of much horror, that he 
suspected her of having an intellect. Whatever intelli- 
gence she had she was giving to the finest taut ability 
in her, to the winning of this war. There was no man- 
date relating to food, however inconsiderable or how- 
ever trivial, that she and her household did not obey 
to the letter. 

Thomas appeared. He was spare, with mutton-chop 
whiskers on his brown cheeks. Soft-footed, deft-fin- 


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gered, and turned seventy, he began to gather this and 
that together; doing this with a zeal that lent impor- 
tance, but not rapidity, to the business. A rite it was, 
if you looked at it as he meant you should; and each 
day added to his ritual. 

There were days when she hated him. Why should 
he at seventy be serving her? Was this feeling with 
her a consequence of this war, with its upheavals of 
custom, and its overturnings of values? Had a new 
and livelier conception of democracy overswept peoples 
generally? 

He wore a white jacket which he exchanged at eve- 
nings for a black one. So far as Lucy knew, and it 
comforted her to recall it, no Wing, even before the 
ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Con- 
stitution, had put any human creature into that badge 
of class and caste, a livery. 

She spoke to Thomas here. “While I was dressing 
I saw from my window, Ellen Jackson and Stephen 
start out across the yard somewhere. Have they come 
back?” 

“They’re coming across the medder-lot now. I saw 
’em from the pantry window. They been across fields 
to the pos’ office, to get the mawnin’s mail.” 

Thomas gone, Lucy’s gaze went out between the 
posts of the porch to the foot of the steps, where, with 
sweet wing-whirr as they descended, half a dozen 
pigeons were alighting. 

In her skirt and blouse, her elbow on the arm of her 
chair, and her chin in her palm, gazing into the smoke- 
blue distance of the October landscape as one staring 
into the future, she looked not at all the girl, but the 
weary and embittered woman. 

The grass of the yard was gone to seed; she and 


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Jerry were harried as it was, for labor in the fields 
with the war-time crops. The trees were in the glory 
of their autumn coloring, the foliage of a black gum 
blood-red against a spruce. A chestnut dropped slow- 
circling leaves of gold to mat with the long wet grass 
at its feet, where a gray-coated squirrel scampered and 
scolded, as it hunted for the windfalls of the night. 

She loved this home. It was antiquated. It lacked 
every quality of what the world calls smartness. She 
remembered a speech once on Stephen’s lips. “For 
God’s sake, in these peripatetic United States, let us 
Kentuckians in our homes stay put!” Well, she and 
little Stephen would stay put. Her gaze came back 
from its survey, and her hand closed again on the news- 
paper in her lap. 

With a gesture of bitterness, she relifted it. What 
had Philip Gibbs and his war news to do here in this 
scene of serenity, fruition, and content? This garden 
spot remote from European affairs: 

A few days ago there were heart- 
rending scenes when 5,000 males be- 
tween the ages of 14 and 60 were sent 
away further into the German lines. 

They were assembled in the chief square 
where they carried little parcels and 
handbags, and from their wives and 
mothers and children there rose loud 
wailing, and all the men wept as they 
embraced those who were dear to them, 
and there was agony of human hearts. 

Why write any more? There reaches 
me the astounding news that Germany 
has surrendered. If this be true, and 
I can hardly believe it, because after all 
these years of war the imagination 
cannot adapt itself to the belief of such 
a sudden ending, there will be no need 
to write any more of these horrors ; but 


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henceforth there will be the joy of re- 
cording the gradual healing of the heart 
of the world, and getting back to life 
after all this death, and the memorial of 
all that heroic youth which has fallen in 
the gaining of this victory, by which 
liberty comes to us again, and justice 
is done. 

“Oh, high heaven,” she cried, and cast the paper 
from her. “And what is it that he says so easily? 
‘Getting back to life after all this death!’ Who are we 
who’ve suffered through these things you describe, 
Philip Gibbs, that you mock us? ‘Henceforth there will 
be the joy of recording the gradual healing of the 
world ’ Do you think, then, Philip Gibbs, there are 
not those of us who must weep forever? Do you over- 
look us because we are not of those you enumerate from 
whom arose loud wailing?” 

What was it he said on this same page, concerning 
the unthinkable things that man can visit upon man? 
Bearing upon what lay behind the blank wall of this 
word missing , that might be as much worse than death 
as mercy is removed from pitilessness? She turned to 
where in the column were set down happenings within 
certain areas reached by the advancing armies of the 
Allies, and from which the retiring German forces had 
retreated : 

I spoke with some young priests who 
are professors at a college here, and 
asked them some questions. How had 
the Germans behaved? What did they 
think of things? 

“Sir,” said one of these priests, in 
good English, “I cannot tell you what 
we have suffered. I dare not tell you, 
lest I should break down and weep, 
which would be bad on this day of joy.” 


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219 


Lucy in her chair was facing the lawn. The screen 
door behind her opened. Opened so discreetly that she 
knew it was the hand of Ellen Jackson that did it. 
There followed an outburst of baby glee in a high and 
sweet treble, the bang-to of the door, and the flight of 
small feet across the porch. In the moment of discov- 
ering his mother, Stephen had escaped through the 
doorway, and from Ellen. 

Oh, the small warm body flinging itself now upon 
her, the chubby arms stoutly enfolding what of her 
they could; the yellow head burrowing, and as it lifted 
from her shoulder, revealing a flushed and expectant 
face; the onslaught here of moist and tempestuous 
kisses, bridging as they were meant by him to do, the 
separation of the long night between the two; mother 
and baby son ! 

She submitted. She always did. Then she freed 
herself from the caresses she dared not return, and to 
which she would not yield; notwithstanding they filled 
her with a terrible and sweet joy because they re- 
awakened in her the sense of motherhood and posses- 
sion, whose aroused passion she so feared. Alive at 
the bottom of her chained-up heart was a quivering 
love and a need for love, and because she knew this 
she was afraid. 

Ellen Jackson detached the child, and set him 
upon his feet, stooping next to pick up the letters 
he had cast upon the floor; these being his allotted 
portion of the mail to carry home from the post 
office. 

At the age of sixty-five, in her black dress and apron, 
she moved with an upright carriage which few persons 
younger could match. And she had a tongue, brief 
and succinct but telling, that when she did speak, never 


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spared what she blasted with her scorn as “foolish- 
ness.” 

There survived in Lucy a distinct memory of her 
childhood’s awe of Ellen Jackson; whereas little 
Stephen took her as naturally as he took all things and 
all people; submitting to her because he had to, and 
without resentment. 

One Mom Belle Preston raised Lucy. Three years 
ago this person was routed out of her retirement, and 
forcibly returned to Ashe to assume the care of Stephen. 
Grown more portly with years, and not a little inde- 
pendent, she limited her walks with him to daily pot- 
terings about the grounds, leaving it to the more active 
Ellen to take him abroad. 

Stephen broke away from Ellen now, and raced to 
the far end of the porch. Having delved into a pile 
of his playthings lying beneath the hammock swing, he 
started back, a stick carried upright against his shoul- 
der, and dragging behind him a pasteboard box turned 
upside down, and attached to a string. 

He was a shapely child, clean-limbed and firm-set, 
his hair which was cropped short, as yellow as daffodils. 
He fitted chubbily into his clothes, linen knickerbockers, 
and a tunic blouse of the same white linen, belted. 
Lucy had debated a long while about the socks. Would 
Stephen, the sire, have considered them entirely manly? 
But in the end she gave in to them. He was all but 
three years old, the functionings of a baby over with, 
childhood for him begun; and his father had never seen 
him! She, the mother of the missing Stephen’s glori- 
ous son, could have cursed for its cruelty a man-made 
world that tolerates war; and gladly died for it, were 
it impiety. 

She took the mail from Ellen’s extended hand, but 


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her gaze was still with her baby son. Suddenly she 
grasped the nature of his occupation. 

The stick against his shoulder, in his mind was a 
gun. And his step as near as his feet could compass it, 
was measured and martial. He marched the length of 
the porch to Lucy in her chair, and Ellen who stood 
beside her. Now with the stick against his shoulder, 
and the measured tread, he was turning. 

“What is it you carry against your shoulder, son?” 

“Uh gun.” 

“What is it you are dragging by the string?” 

“Uh tank.” 

She could have groaned. 

To her a world at peace was the normal state, and 
the four years past, the abnormal and monstrous con- 
dition. The state natural to her child was war, with 
its businesses and preoccupations; the condition which 
his opening faculties finding and fastening on, was ac- 
cepting as the normal one. 

Did he go to town, sitting beside her in the car, or 
more often beside Henry, the chauffeur, he saw the 
soldier in khaki, and his officers, everywhere; giving 
character to the streets, filling the trolley cars, getting 
in and out of official motor cars. The city was the site 
of a cantonment whose quota was forty thousand 
men. 

During the summer past, he went to the village day 
after day, to stand on the platform of the station with 
a hand in Jerry’s brown one, to see the troop trains go 
by; a bevy of soldier faces at each window of every 
crowded coach, boys harking from every state in the 
union, youthful and grinning. 

If Mom Belle Preston took him to Sunday school, 
across the road, he saw flags; heard martial hymns; 


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and listened to the war talk of the other children. 

Every mail brought magazines and illustrated 
papers. As Mom Belle in her starchy dress and white 
apron turned the pages of these for Stephen’s amuse- 
ment, her spectacles resting afar down on her great 
nose for her own accommodation, they looked, these 
two, the child of sixty-eight, and the child of three, spec- 
ulating as they gazed, on every pictured condition, crea- 
ture, and engine of war, that could pass the censor. If 
it be true that the background for life is fixed for the 
individual in the formative years of his early child- 
hood, then little Stephen Janvier was a war baby 
indeed. 

Lucy’s eyes followed the white-clad little figure, now 
almost at the far end of the porch again. She turned 
to the erect figure beside her. Her voice had a sudden 
strange, almost an awed inflection. 

“Ellen, do you realize that I, too, virtually never 
knew my father?” 

Ellen too had been following the child with her 
glance. She moved here, coming a step forward, and 
showing animation. Her erect person straightened. 
Her voice that ordinarily was curt and brief, took 
on the level tenseness of the narrator who sees as 
well as recalls. The past was hers; she was in it, and 
of it. 

“I was on this porch with you, a little toddling thing, 
a little older than Stephen here, but not yet allowed at 
the table with the grown folks. It was such another 
day as this, mild an’ warm, though it was later in the 
fall, being November. I took the telegram myself 
from Alonzo Simpson’s brother; him who was station 
agent then; an’ carried it to ol’ Miss, who was at the 
breakfast table. She opened it, an’ read it through. 


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She never cried out; nothing like that; it wasn’t her 
way. Turning, she said to me : 

“ ‘My grandson, Mr. John Henry, is dead at Tam- 
pa, Florida, of typhoid fever and Chicago packer’s 
rotten meat. They might have given me notice that 
he was ill, and at least the chance of getting to him.’ 

“Quick, like ol’ Miss always was, she begun to give 
her orders, directing Tom that the carriage go for Dr. 
Westcott; and the Jersey wagon fetch Belle Preston, 
who was home takin’ a week’s rest before the fracas 
came, which was due with your ma any day. 

“Then she came out from the dining room to the 
hall, me following, and begun to mount the steps to 
Miss Selina, your ma, standing at the head of the stairs, 
and calling. She had seen Johnny Simpson from her 
window, coming with the yellow envelope in his hand, 
and had sensed it. There wasn’t any keeping the truth 
from her after that. The baby come the next day; an’ 
both of ’em, mother an’ child, dead the day next to 
that.” 

“Ellen,” Lucy’s voice again was awed; “have you 
thought about this, too? My father, who was twenty- 
six when he died, could not remember his father ?” 

“His pa was killed at Chickamauga, in ’63. I was 
a gal, training to be allowed to come into the house 
as a house servant, but I remember about that too, the 
same as if it was yesterday. Little Mr. John Henry, 
your daddy, was three months old. He an’ his ma, 
Miss Jinny, as we called her, was here with Mrs. Wing 
till the war should be over, an’ the men folks get home. 
When Mr. John Henry’s young pa come home, it was 
in what the sol’yers in them days called a wooden over- 
coat. But he come. His ma, Mrs. Wing, had her 
mind made up that he was going to be buried where 


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she wanted him. She went herself and brought him 
home and put him away.” 

“Ellen, do we only take breath, that the new gener- 
ation may reach manhood, to go to war again? The 
heart of what woman, probably not yet born, is to 
break when my baby Stephen’s time comes? And what 
nation’s young men, now in their swaddling clothes, 
will be the enemy then?” 

The letters in Lucy’s lap slid to the floor. As Ellen 
replaced them, one with a bold, firm superscription, 
came uppermost. Lucy gave a cry, and caught it up. 

“Ellen, Ellen, how did I fail to see it was here? 
Take Stephen to Mom Belle, please, she by this time 
must be through her breakfast. If it should be news! 
It is from Warrington Adams, Ellen, and it is the 
second from him in a week!” 

She was alive enough now, alive and erect, opening 
the oblong envelope with passionate eagerness, trem- 
bling with emotion, with anguish, she knew not with what 
contending, distracted feelings. She was not conscious 
when the two went, reentering the house as they had 
come, through the screened front doorway. Her eyes 
ran down the page. Ah, here, here, at last it began to 
be pertinent : 

... as I promised you, Lucy, I am seeing every man it is 
humanly possible to get at, who returns to New York from the 
front, certainly every newspaper man. The members of our 
own overseas staff have instructions since I wrote you five days 
ago to keep ears and eyes wide for any word or clew brought 
out of the retaken country, by any released civilian or escaped 
prisoner. If Stephen is alive, in or out of Germany, you and 
I will find him. 

But do you really feel, dear, that you have to urge me to 
new efforts? Even by so sweet a tribute as your last letter 


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225 


conveys, with its reference to what you generously call my 
“genius for friendship.” 

Not even for your dear sake will I allow that I need any 
urging. When two decent young men for their four years at 
college are roommates, men so different that the attraction is 
the stronger, not even Stephen’s wife may think she can urge 
Stephen’s friend to effort. 

If this matter of an armistice comes to pass — and we are 
come now, you and I, to the occasion for this letter — I plan to 
go over at once. A Gilbert to his Richard, I’ll sing my chant 
through every repatriation camp in Germany, but I’ll find some 
clew. For me to have tried to get over sooner, though I do not 
say I have not done so, would have gained me only the prompt 
denial of official impatience. 

Because of the abundance of your woman’s tenderness, which 
is another way of saying your intuitive comprehension, I have 
not felt it needful to touch before on my so evident handicap, 
the obvious explanation of so many things; for one, my being 
here at a desk in a newspaper office during the four years of 
the war. 

And now a word to tell you what’s doing in the greatest 
little village on earth. The home town of the only bronze 
Liberty Girl on the map is preparing for the fourth Liberty 
Loan drive. You know how we do things here when we start. 
As for the big news of the day, the possibility of an armistice, 
I would say New York is afraid to let herself stop and con- 
sider if there’s anything in it, because of her fear that behind 
it may be somebody’s botching, and her feeling that the Boche 
is not beaten yet to the point he needs to be. But when 
we consider what a cessation in hostilities will mean in lives 
saved. . . . 

The page fluttered from Lucy’s hand. She was cry- 
ing; two great tears rolling from the corners of her 
eyes down her thin cheeks ; she who said her heart was 
ice, and her tears frozen at their source. 

Stephen accused her in the days of their courtship! 


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of being a proud woman, taking too great comfort in 
her self-reliance and her independence, and caring 
nothing for the cooperation with herself of others. 
And it was true enough until as it happened, she fell 
in love with him; the astounding sovereign strength 
of love sweeping aside the prides of all baser stamps. 

Warrington, his friend and hers, who had done so 
much, who had the insight to know what there was 
that could be done, leaving Stephen’s uncle, man of 
affairs as he was, to waste time and impotent rage at 
Washington; Warrington to the end would do all that 
could be done ; and she, now become so humble, so will- 
ing, with gratitude would let him. 

It had been a weary time after Stephen left her. 
For nine months she carried her child; for eight months 
to follow she nursed him at her breast. At no time 
could she leave her grandmother, by then bedridden, 
and who when little Stephen was four months old, died. 
She could make no plans in those first months to go 
across to Stephen; as she might have done. He was an 
American wearing the uniform of a country other than 
his own. During this time his plans by which he might 
come to her and return, failed successively. After 
which it was too late. 

Why should New York seem so much closer to 
Stephen and the chance of finding him, if he be alive? 
Closer than her own Kentucky? These last months 
of praying for some word out of silence, more than 
once she hurried east, dropping everything, all the 
sedatives of war-work through which she tried to dull 
the sleepless gnawing at her heart and brain, there 
to listen to the pulse of the great city beating to a tense- 
ness as never before ; until a sudden mental and physical 
repletion of sensation and emotion sent her home. 


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227 


She closed her eyes; seeming to perceive too sharply 
the dreadful misery of life. She knew that for her, be 
Stephen dead or alive, there was no one in the world 
forever nearer, dearer, and more importunate. He 
was her grief, her joy, her happiness, and she panted 
and longed for him. He filled her whole life. It was 
inconceivable that he and she should be forced by fate 
to live their lives apart. 

She arose from her chair abruptly. Entering the 
doorway, she passed along the hall, reached and lifted 
the stable telephone. 

“Henry?” 

Henry Oliver, approaching fifty, was the nearest to 
anything young on the place. His voice, which was 
chipper, human, and cheerful, answered the call. 

“Yes’m, Miss Looey.” 

“I want you and the car directly after lunch. I have 
to run into town. I’m going to New York to-morrow.” 

Then she remembered Philip Gibbs and went back to 
the porch with its outlook on a multicolored autumn 
world, to get him. As he followed the conquering 
armies of the allies into the retaken villages and towns, 
in the paths of released and returning prisoners, every 
word from him held possibilities for her. She recov- 
ered the paper, and found the paragraph picturing the 
retreat of the enemy : 

Before he is ready to leave our men 
are on his heels. Our horse artillery is 
firing along his tracks before he can 
escape with his heavy loads. His rear 
guards are captured before the main 
body is out of danger. 

It is very slow, this pursuit, when seen 
from our side of things, but as quick 
as hurrying death to masses of German 
soldiers. 


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“As quick as hurrying death!” She was obsessed 
by the thought that sooner or later out of this retreat; 
from some of these retaken towns or villages, some 
word might come for her. And wild as the hope was, 
and small as were the chances, she knew that she was 
hurrying to New York and to Warrington Adams to 
tell him so. 


CHAPTER XXI 


L UCY and Henry left the house grounds behind 
them, and came in sight of the entrance gate. 
She wore a black suit, a white blouse and a 
black hat. 

“Now that I think of it, stop at the butcher shop, 
Henry; I want to speak to Mr. Simpson.” 

The car sped toward the village between the rows 
of black ash trees that met above the road. 

Rural central Kentucky, a diversified region, pas- 
toral and agricultural, fertile and prolific, dotted with 
thickets and little woods, and watered by creeks and by 
springs feeding slender watercourses, has an actual, a 
sensuous charm for the beholder. Lucy loved the 
countryside around Ashe with a physical passion. 

She had spent her early life out of doors, years 
strenuous and tireless, climbing the hillsides, scaling 
walls and rail fences, clambering over the rocky bed of 
the creek. Later she raced the pikes on Powhatan, 
her small and tough Indian pony, bending over the 
little roan’s neck, his short, gleaming mane whipping 
her face, her black hair flying, urging him onward with 
all the power of her own youthful body. 

She knew for miles around, every hill, upland, low- 
land and bottom; every watercourse, old mill pond, and 
still pool; knew the fields and pastures where the first 
mushrooms pushed through, dank with the dew, and 
shining white in the morning sun amid the cropped 
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green. She knew each foot of uncleared woods and 
forest surviving, and passionately loved them; the 
haunts as these were in spring of maidenhair, the waxy 
Indian pipe, trillium, starry campion, bloodroot, the 
adder’s tongue; and in the fall of the year as now, of 
the scarlet-beaded jack-in-the-pulpit, the mauve-pink 
wahoo, the black fox grape, and — almost vanished with 
the vanishing forests — the fleshy golden pawpaw. She 
knew every farmhouse and hamlet, every nature of soil 
and the resulting crops; knew the phases of the suc- 
ceeding seasons. 

To-day the blackbirds were gathering, lifting and 
falling, settling in the tops of the overhead ashs in 
black multitudes, to rise a moment after, the air above 
the purring of the car filled with the rushing of their 
wings, together with their raucous cries. 

She remembered autumns when the branches of the 
pines near her own house snapped beneath their weight; 
when Jerry’s shotgun proved inadequate either to dis- 
lodge them or intimidate them, so incredible was the 
black host; and the farm hands had to be summoned. 
And she recalled her grandmother saying that in her 
childhood, it was the passenger pigeons in their annual 
passings, that broke the forests here in Kentucky under 
their weight. 

The car turned and stopped before the little brick 
shop, squat and square. Mr. Simpson, as was his way 
with his friends, came out, squat of build himself, and 
dumpy as well and bald, in a white apron and his shirt- 
sleeves. The steel-framed spectacles worn a little far 
down on the pudgy nose, out of the way of the mild 
glance, suggested rather the artisan, cabinetmaker or 
shoemaker; but not a butcher. The eyes pale blue be- 


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231 


hind scant flaxen lashes, sought the face of Lucy, who 
leaned toward him from the car. 

“An’ what can I do for you to-day, Miss Lucy?” 

“How are you, Mr. Simpson? You are to decide 
for me, if my corn is more needed by the food admin- 
istration as corn, or as lard and bacon on the hoof . I 
have thirty-seven piggies in the woodland lot. They 
must begin on the corn or go. I leave the responsi- 
bility with you. I’m off for the east to-morrow.” 

“One minute, Miss Lucy. I’ll keep the matter on 
my mind, an’ see Jerry about it the next day or two. 
A minute befo’h you go, please, about a matter of my 
own.” 

Mr. Simpson, bothered little man, born and bred on 
a small farm just outside the limits of Ashe, was ap- 
pealing in his worried way. The obligation would have 
been the same with Lucy if he were not. He and she 
were of the old-timers; the old stock; scions of the 
original settlers hereabouts, and bound to stand to- 
gether. 

He blinked as he looked up at her, the afternoon 
sun being in his face, the kindest little man in half a 
dozen counties. “I’d like to have you take a look at 
some’n, befo’h you get away.” 

He trotted back across the flagstones at this. Lucy 
saw him through the glass front of his show window, 
take something down from the wall from beneath the 
big round clock behind the meat-block. As he came 
again to the curb, he handed her a newspaper cut of 
Lonnie, his son, with a fetching grin and smartly 
spruced hair, in ill-fitting khaki. 

“I cut that picter outer Lonnie’s evening paper, the 
one he delivered round here for four years, taking the 


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job when Bennie Harlan, preacher’s boy, give it up. 
It’s going to please him over there in that Archangel, 
in Russia, to know his picter come out in his own 
paper.” 

The little man’s face grew hard. Its appeal van- 
ished, and in the pale mild eyes appeared a glint. 
“They’re tellin’ me, Miss Lucy, the president’s goin’ 
to give them Germans peace! Why, their cities an’ 
towns ain’t touched yet, their grain is bein’ harvested 
right along in their fields, their cows are standin’ in 
their comfortable stalls, nobody ain’t set no axe to their 
orchard trees !” 

***** * 

The car left the curb. Truly, thought Lucy, the 
greater part of the world has drawn together in four 
years. It needs no covenants, no courts of arbitra- 
tion, no machinery of governments, to bring peoples 
together. A common calamity had done this. Setting 
up in minds that had no thoughts at all on such sub- 
jects before, concepts of new and far horizons. The 
little butcher was following the world’s news avidly. 
News that created partitions in a mind that knew 
nothing of such partitions before; that bred hatreds 
however justifiable, in a creature unvisited by such hate 
before. War can do this; war does do this; war 
through its very needs must do this ! 

The car retraced its way beneath the ash trees and 
the blackbirds with their raucous creakings. It ap- 
proached Lucy’s own gateway on the one hand, and 
the steps set in the bank leading to the parsonage on 
the other. 

’Genie Harrison at this moment was unlatching the 
gate which opened on these steps. She waved a hand, 
and the car slowed down. 


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233 


“Lucy, darling!” 

Her chic suit, and her hat that matched, were sub- 
dued, that is to say, they were subdued for her; the 
skirt being no shorter than the merely average daring 
person would venture it. Recalling the extremes to 
which she carried all vogues in the past, one felt she 
would have subdued her hair also, which was auburn 
and gleaming and abounding, if nature would have 
shown her how. The car stopped as she reached the 
last step. 

“Thank you. Let me get in. If you’re starting for 
the city ask me to go with you; you know how I hate 
the trolley.” 

She settled herself beside Lucy. Her eyes were set 
wide apart so that the outer edges of the lids seemed 
to "be one with the curves of the temples, giving her an 
amazing open gaze. She had a childlike person, a 
small, undeveloped bosom and thin shoulders. 

“How well you look in your black, Lucy.” 

She sighed profoundly, her eyes still surveying Lucy. 
“You’ve been wearing it, of course, ever since Mrs. 
Wing went; but think of the comfort it must be to you 
now! My family won’t let me have it; father won’t 
consider it. But, oh, Lucy, if I had married Bennie 
before he went across, I could wear it in spite of ’em; 
and I do want mourning ” 

She dabbed her eyes with a little ball of handker- 
chief. “And I would have married him. It wasn’t I 
that was backward! Damn a world of false values; 
he’d been raised in a damnable school of life that per- 
suaded him it was manly to decry himself because my 
people had disgracefully overmuch, and he was poor!” 

She was crying openly now. Poor little dancer, her 
wings pierced by that bit of German shell! New to 


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love, the soul’s tenderest grace of all, its wakened de- 
sires now hopeless, hers was grief not two months old, 
bleeding and raw; and astounding in its insistence to 
her who until now, knew nothing of abnegation, or self- 
discipline; casual and indiscriminate in her past love 
affairs as the wind that up-flings all leaves alike in its 
path, she still was astonished at what had happened to 
her, and resentful of her predicament. 

“Bennie was an absurd sort, wasn’t he, with his habit 
of exaggerated understatement y as I heard some one 
put it? He told me that you played dolls with him; 
and he played Injuns with you. I asked him which 
he liked best. ‘Dolls,’ he said; ‘gettin’ ’em to bed with 
measles; when I wasn’t shooting craps with Julius Buck 
and William Coffin behind the church!’ ” 

Lucy moved. “ ’Genie, don y t! As you suggest, I 
grew up with him.” 

The car bowled along the pike leading to the city. 
’Genie’s red lips were parted over her white teeth, 
which were small and even; lending her face an air 
of breathless, even panting expectancy, the same look, 
indeed, as distinguished little Stephen Janvier when he 
pursued his winged creatures, moth or butterfly. 

“I hate days as beautiful as this one. I hate that 
field of tall corn shocks; I hate its blue shadows , and 
its orange pumpkins. I hate this woodland here on this 
side, and the sheep dotting it. I suppose because they’re 
beautiful too, in their ways. Why mustn’t I talk about 
Bennie? What else is there I can so want to talk 
about?” 

She looked at Lucy resentfully, and in a way fur- 
tively, her eyes hot with a certain reproach. Lucy, 
aware of what was coming, looked icily ahead. Side 
by side on the leather cushions of the car, these two 


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235 


bereft young creatures, their spirits suffused each with 
its own sufferings, which in the case of ’Genie were as 
bodily hunger is to a child; never were women under 
similar griefs, more dissimilar; a poppy tossing in the 
flaying storm the one, lashed and beaten; milk-white 
phlox the other, erect in the successive flashes of the 
lightning, and stiffly pale. 

’Genie’s cry was vivid as color, and quivering. “You 
married Stephen; you had those weeks with the man 
you love before he left. And you have more” Her 
voice at its best was husky, always a surprise since it 
did not match her person. It here sank hoarsely, 
though it is doubtful if she herself could have said 
why; then broke on a sob. “You have his and your 
child !” 

Lucy refusing to reply, as before they sat side by 
side. Their faces, haunted according to each nature 
by the melancholy of those who remember, looked 
ahead at the road unwinding. The car swerved to 
avoid a truck marked Q.M.D., U.S.A., driven by two 
soldiers in khaki, and piled high with barreled pota- 
toes; followed by another; and another. The truck 
farms through this immediate section constitute one of 
the potato markets of the world, and the supply de- 
partment of the great camp, six miles across country, 
benefited by its proximity. 

Again the car swerved, this time to avoid a cow with 
a young calf at her side, driven along the road by a 
quite small boy, the scene bucolic, and in keeping with 
the surroundings. Each time the car swung out of its 
course, the sun with something of the heat of a summer 
day fell across the faces and the persons of the two 
young women on the back seat. 

“Lucy,” the husky voice now was piteous; “he wrote 


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his father that a Tommy over there looked him up and 
down — Bennie was some gangly and some tall, wasn’t 
he? — and asked him how it felt to have length and 
position and no breadth?” 

Again she was motionless, held by her trouble, a 
suffering which was of the flesh perhaps, but which 
was de.ep, which indeed was bigger than ’Genie, so that 
as yet she did not know how to adjust herself to it, and 
take up her load. 

They were come now to the outskirts of the park 
marking one of the boundaries of the city, a region of 
modern houses, large grounds and costly shrubberies. 
The car turned in at a gateway, swept about a drive 
flanked by clipped lawns, and stopped before ’Genie’s 
house. A bright gold light from the mid-afternoon sun 
shimmered through the tops of some young trees. 
There was a smell of autumn in the air. 

’Genie turned suddenly and kissed Lucy passion- 
ately, throwing her arms about her, arms that were 
thin and small as those of a child. Her childish shoul- 
ders, thin within the chic jacket, shivered as with cold. 
It was with relief that Lucy saw her go. 


CHAPTER XXII 


L UCY, arrived at her mother-in-law’s house, 
nodded to the maid who admitted her. She fol- 
lowed her through the parlor to the library be- 
yond. Helen, who was expecting her, came to me;et 
her, hands extended. As did the Roman matrons of 
an earlier republic, she suggested always a great lady, 
with her firm nostrils, sweet and rather wide mouth, 
and her eyes of an indefinable blue-gray set a trifle 
close together. 

“Mother!” 

The two women came together with this cry from 
the younger, Lucy yielding for the moment, and letting 
her head sink on Helen’s shoulder. Then she got 
herself together. 

“Mother, the horror and the restlessness are here 
again. Kitty can’t do what I ask her; I’ve talked with 
her at the camp over the ’phone. She can’t leave her 
canteen work. If I run away one time more, will you 
stay with little Stephen? I mean will you go out to 
him? There’s too much flu in town, you see.” 

Helen loosened the silk scarf about Lucy’s throat. 
“If you feel it’s better for you to get away again, why, 
it will be. You know I’ll stay with Stephen. You know 
all I want is to be asked to stay with him. You hardly 
grasp yet, I suspect, that to me he’s my only child’s 
child. It won’t do at all to bring him to town.” 

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Lucy nodded. Her dark eyes regardfully were 
sweeping the other woman up and down. 

“You’re pale.” She spoke accusingly. “You’re 
tired; you’re no more immune than the others of us 
women made to suffer through no act, nor any choice 
of our own.” 

She removed her gloves, and threw down her hand 
bag. “You’ve been out at the camp all day, I suppose, 
nursing influenza drafted-boys, in your mask and gown? 
You’ve a pact with yourself, I believe, to forget, 
through perpetual physical exhaustion!” 

“Let’s keep sensible, Lucy. Our respect for one an- 
other, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, I do believe, 
began in the fact that we’re neither of us sentimental 
in our attitudes to life. If I’ve been out at camp, one 
of many women doing what the novice can in an emer- 
gency, it’s because I want to be; don’t overlook that. 
I have a cup of tea always when I get home. Here it 
comes, let’s enjoy it.” 

“Mother?” 

“Yes?” 

These two women adored one another. They un- 
derstood each other very well. Theirs was the antithe- 
sis of the accepted relation between the mother and the 
wife of a man. 

“I wasn’t honest just now. Of course little Stephen 
can’t come to town, but back of my asking you to go to 
Ashe is another reason. I’m willing to trust only you, 
or Kitty, if there should come a telephone call for me 
like the first.” 

She drew a letter from her bag, and threw it on the 
table. “It’s from Warrington. On the strength of my 
faith based on that first telephone message, I’m letting 
him go over to search for Stephen. You’ve not de- 


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239 


ceived me, you and Uncle Stephen? You’ve not agreed 
as to the chance of its being dependable, merely to 
satisfy me?” 

Helen, who was pouring the tea, set the teapot down. 
Without any warning she felt suddenly weak. More 
than her own grief, which was very great, it was the 
suffering of Lucy that was breaking her heart. Grief 
that the girl was so cheated of the rights and the de- 
mands of her youth; grief that the cup was put thus 
early to one so young. She wept for her in the night, 
calling her with sincerity, her darling. 

Some two months after Stephen was reported miss- 
ing, Lucy was called to the telephone. The unfamiliar 
voice of a boy, now husky, now treble, spoke. An old- 
young timid voice, Lucy said it was, painstaking and 
anxious. 

“Is this the young Mrs. Stephen Janvier? Have I 
got the right place? I want to be certain it’s the young 
Mrs. Stephen Janvier?” 

She reassured him. “Who is it speaking to me, 
please?” 

“I can’t say. I haven’t the letter with me, but it said 
to tell you that your husband’s a prisoner in Germany. 
You’ll please not try to find who’s speaking. It’ll only 
make trouble if you ” 

According to Lucy the telephone here clicked as the 
receiver at the other end was hung up. 

* * * * 

Helen spoke reluctantly. “You weren’t wrong in 
the least to lay stress on it. We all did. Your Uncle 
Stephen and the secret service left no effort untried to 
trace it beyond that booth in the drug store. We did 
not dare not believe in it.” 

“You still believe Stephen’s alive?” 


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There was silence. Helen’s head had bowed itself, 
her face in her hands. 

“You believe he’s dead. Why?” 

She had approached Helen, and pushed an ottoman 
beside her. Her face was bloodless, and she paused as 
she put the question. 

“His Uncle Stephen says we must have heard some- 
thing otherwise before now. That with every facility 
for the relief of prisoners at work through Washing- 
ton, and through Switzerland, he must have been lo- 
cated. I’m teaching myself to accept it; to admit it.” 
****** 

By and by the girl up-lifted her head from the other’s 
lap. “I think what ails me, and brings on the brain- 
storms, is trying to reconcile a secondary state of mind 
that I’ve built up as a duty with the original mind with 
its bone-deep horror, not of this war, but of war ! En- 
deavoring to live up to the war-self that I’ve put on, 
like the masks worn by the actors in the Greek plays ! 
You knew grandmother; you can say if this hatred of 
war is engendered in me, or implanted.” 

She got up and went back to a seat on the couch. 
“Sometimes I think my attitude toward the whole ma- 
chinery of the present war is only my inherited share 
of my pioneer forbears’ blunt common sense. Horse 
sense. I get overwhelmed with the stupidities of the 
things I see around me as part of war’s conditions; 
outraged with the inconsistencies. Take the flu at our 
camp. Boys out there are lying on cots without sheets 
or pillows. Some have died in their heavy clothes be- 
cause there’s no one to put them comfy in hospital 
nighties. Before we younger women, and we women 
with young children, were rejected as aids, I saw these 
things for myself; and it was only last week they were 


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standing in lines of one to two hundred, in the corridors 
of the base hospital, waiting to be officially admitted, 
often with temperatures of 104 and more. Dazed, 
nauseated, stupefied, homesick; lying on the floors of 
the hallways even, pending attention. I know these 
things, and so do you. One overworked orderly, and 
often no nurse at all, to a ward of fifty ill and often 
dying boys! And yet because it’s war f and military 
regulations in their nature are illogical and stupid 
things, these boys, sick or well, can’t go home to be 
nursed, or to escape infection. And their mothers f ar- 
riving in the city by every train } are not allowed to go 
and nurse them! I challenge God’s doomsday book at 
the day of reckoning, to say if red tape, the red tape of 
bureaucracy and regulations, hasn’t brought about as 
many deaths in this war as the Boche himself.” 

She began to walk about. “And if I apply its out- 
rages individually, eliminating Stephen as a factor; 
looking at myself as one of many thousands of young 
girls and young women affected the world over, what 
has this war done for me? The four years that nor- 
mally should have been the happiest in my life, the 
still formative years of a girl just grown, have been 
what? Have been such, apart from the personal griefs, 
that I would gladly die, so do I hate man and his insti- 
tutions and his governments.” 

“Lucy, dear!” 

“Defend these things then, if you can? Convince 
me that I’m wrong?” 

“I don’t defend them. I didn’t try to defend them 
when my boy, eleven years old, lost his father in the 
Cuban war. Perhaps I am too easily pacified, too 
quickly silenced by the excuses of life. My claims 
doubtless are too soon withdrawn. Mine probably 


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is the resignation of the passive, the less complex crea- 
ture. I am very, very simple, you know, Lucy!” Helen 
spoke even piteously, as one apologizing. 

“I know that I often suspect you of being an angel, 
and know myself to be very much the reverse.” 

Lucy had gone now to the fireplace, and as she 
talked, stood looking at a sketch of Stephen at twelve 
years; a slight thing done in red chalk, of a boy in a 
jacket, wearing a round white collar, and a Windsor tie. 
She gave a quick, sharp exclamation, full of anguish 
and bitterness. 

“You and I who suffer through no fault of our own, 
are women . The ones you and I and other women 
mourn, are young men. Has it occurred to you that 
while it’s men who bring about war , it’s invariably old 
men? Busybody Poloniuses; and seemingly benignant 
Nestors? Did Germany, did France, or England, or 
America, did Austria, Russia, or Italy, give youth one 
representative in their determining councils? Had 
youth a voice in these issues anywhere that you’ve heard 
of? It’s the impertinence of the thing, and the outrage. 
The wars only for which young men , a group class , 
have been responsible , are the revolutions by which the 
world has been moved forward, and the iniquitous sys- 
tems of the old men have been overthrown.” 

“Lucy, dear, the father of your child volunteered; 
he chose of himself to fight in this war.” 

“And I too am fighting in it, heart, hands and for- 
tune, as far as a woman may. You know if I’ve 
shirked. But in my soul I know Fm playing a part, 
and I’m embarrassed in doing it. Stephen saw it in 
his way; we won’t go into that. With us younger peo- 
ple in America, however, I think it’s been a case of 
nation-wide embarrassment. Oh, I do. Not that it 


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243 


didn’t have to come. And not that we didn’t see it had 
to be done even before we came into it.” 

She came back to Helen. “It’s this way. We 
younger Americans had moved past the mental attitude 
necessary for war. We’d come to see the absurdity of 
men killing men; it didn’t look sensible; the idea 
seemed comical; as a proposition it didn’t seem to us 
to hold water; points of view which, as Bennie Harlan 
said, got next to us more than the mere wickedness of 
it. The America that Bennie and I stood for, and I 
believe we are typical, had to educate itself back to a 
point of view that could and would consider war.” 

She picked up a paper cutter, and fingered it. a It’s 
a curious thing to look back on, the young people of a 
nation, and I was one of them, shrinking from reenter- 
ing the corpse of an old and repudiated, an abhorrent 
state of mind. That’s why we young people weren’t 
startled or shocked, when the president said America 
was too proud to fight. Some of us sidestepped, shied 
off a bit at the word proud, afraid it sounded too much 
like rhetoric, Bennie, for example. But it didn’t shock 
us one little bit; we knew exactly what he meant. It 
was the older minds that were shocked. I think there’s 
something heartening rather than disconcerting about 
us younger ones in this. It makes it much more won- 
derful what we’ve compelled ourselves to do.” 

She flung the paper cutter down. “But we’ll never 
forgive you ! My world will never forgive your world, 
that forced us to take up the obsolete weapons of brute 
force we despise. God knows how we wince, we young 
people; ’Genie and I, for example, when we go to see 
Dr. Harlan and Mrs. Harlan. Truth itself is subject 
to war! They see Bennie as one of the shining hosts 
of good, battling with Christ as leader, for dominion 


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in the skies. ’Genie and I see him the victim of a civil- 
ization that stands confessed a failure. I must call up 
Uncle Stephen, and ask if he can let me have some 
money for my ticket and such. It’s too late to get it 
any other way.” 

***** * 

After Lucy was gone Helen sat and yearned for her. 
Spirited, impatient, bred to form like the thoroughbred 
of her own state, indeed not unlike some quivering 
highly strung young filly, the heart of the older twice- 
bereaved woman, bled for the younger. Again a wave 
of great weariness came over her. It seemed to her 
all at once that life asked too much of her, and she no 
longer knew how to meet it. 

* * * * * 

It was past ten o’clock. Lucy’s trunk was gone 
downstairs, packed as always by Ellen Jackson’s un- 
hurried and careful hands. Ellen’s own trunk was 
ready. As she in the past went with Mrs. Wing, so 
she now went with the granddaughter. 

Lucy was in her bedroom; with a negligee wrapped 
about her gown, she sat before a handful of wood 
fire that blazed fitfully on the hearth. Little Stephen 
was asleep in his room adjoining; Mom Belle was in 
the room next that. 

She gazed at the old wooden mantel, an Adam’s 
model, painted white, her brows indrawn with a frown. 
It was placed here when the house was built 
and like much else in the old interior, she sus- 
pected it in its execution, was very bad. But not for 
that did she frown. The side panels were elaborate 
with scrolls, garlands and crossed swords. The central 
panel beneath the outstretched wings of a screaming 


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eagle, commemorated the battle of New Orleans; the 
backwoodsmen from Kentucky, the heroes of that oc- 
casion crudely depicted in their hunting shirts and caps 
of coonskin, with their long squirrel rifles resting on a 
breastwork of cotton bales. Lucy had occupied this 
room all her life. Remembering how she as a child 
had gazed at this paneling, pondering and speculating 
over its every depicted feature, it angered her to rea- 
lize that the human mind from its earliest conscious- 
ness, is made to glorify war. It aroused a deeper 
anger in her that the hearthstone of the home should 
convey the lesson. 

The telephone on the table at the head of the bed 
rang sharply. It could be any one of half a dozen 
reasonable calls; it might be Helen Janvier speaking 
from the city; it could be the Harlans across the road; 
or ’Genie ; but it did not suggest itself so to Lucy. She 
knew in fact that it was none of these, though she 
could not have said why. 

Rising to answer the call, her hand sought her throat, 
and she began to tremble. The distance she must go 
from hearth to bed seemed vast; her feet in their mules 
stumbled; though in truth the bell had not stopped 
ringing when she got to the receiver. 

She knew what the voice would be that would speak 
to her ; what its timbre ; its intonation ; the voice, husky- 
changing to treble, of a boy; an anxious voice; hur- 
ried and stumbling: 

“Is this Mrs. Stephen Janvier?” 

“It’s Mrs. Janvier speaking. Oh, tell me; won’t 
you tell me, who you are? And why you’re speaking 
to me again after so long?” 

“I had to come without this letter, too, and tell you 


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what I can remember of it. Some men escaped out of 
Germany from the prison-camp at — wait — I wrote 
that down ” 

The voice began again: “I’ll spell it. T-e-r- 
m-o-n-d-e. Some men escaped from that place have 
word for you. They planned to come out by way of 
Ghent. The letter came yesterday.” The telephone 
clicked as the receiver was hung up. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


T HE next day as Lucy sped east with Ellen Jack- 
son she looked back to the moment when, the 
message over the telephone abruptly ended, she 
hung up the receiver. 

She remembered as her first act that she laughed 
aloud, rejoicing madly. She had not questioned the 
source of her information, nor its reliability; the 
fashion in which the message came to her had not 
bothered her. She was conscious only that the gates of 
life had opened for her a little way, and the silence had 
spoken. 

Standing there in her room, she babbled; she knew 
now it was that; telling herself she must speak to Mr. 
Stephen Janvier; or first must talk with Stephen’s 
mother; that she must send a night letter following 
her day message to Warrington Adams, postponing 
her arrival in New York by twenty-four hours; giving 
herself time for a family council and discussion. 

She did none of these things until later. Instead she 
fled into the adjoining room, flashed on the shaded night 
light, and flung herself on her knees beside her son in 
his small white bed. 

She was weeping as she did so. Her shoulders were 
shaken by the force of her great sobs. Whereupon 
Stephen awoke, great, splendid baby, sitting up sud- 
denly, flushed and heavy; looked at her with dilated 
frightened eyes, and began to wail. 

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She rose from her knees at this, and sat beside him 
on the bed; took him in her arms and gathered him 
close, a thing she so rarely permitted herself to do, 
crooning to him madly yet softly, with a rocking mo- 
tion of her body, laughing and crying weakly between 
her reassuring words, now and again pressing her lips 
to his hair, his soft, small neck, his clinging hands. 

“There, there, there, little son; see now, see now 

n 

* * * * * * 

To-day on the speeding train, she wondered at her- 
self as she looked back; that she considered delaying 
her journey; or went so frankly mad with her joy. 

She had spoken to Mr. Stephen Janvier over the 
telephone a little later, and he hearing her story had 
brought her promptly to earth ; all too quickly pricking 
the mounting bubble of her too great elation. 

He would not say the information might not prove 
true. But the months elapsed since the first message 
had furnished no evidence to verify the truth of its 
statements; and he begged her not to place too much 
hope on this one. 

He attributed it, as he did the first message, to some 
German family in the community, well-disposed and 
believing what they told her, since it was impossible to 
think that any one, alien or foe, would purposely mis- 
lead her. They were unwilling to disclose themselves 
and their identity, since they in that event must also 
disclose the source of their information, and the man- 
ner of its reaching them; a matter liable to lay them 
open to suspicion or worse. 

So he reasoned. And to-day Lucy sat and gazed out 
the car window, sad; the more distraught because of 
the moment’s wild hoping; watching the country and 


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249 


the passing farmhouses and hamlets with their long 
shadows, mellow in the slanting golden light; for it 
was late afternoon, and she and Ellen Jackson had 
boarded their sleeper at noon. 

Where then, living or dead, was Stephen? Was 
she ever to know? Life is a long road to travel at 
twenty-four, with a load of uncertainty such as this 
forever with her. 

Why was he given to her to be taken away? She 
had not asked life for passion. Love and passion had 
been thrust upon her before she was ready for them, 
unwelcome gifts forced into her unwilling keeping. 

She was staring out the window still, when the em- 
purpled sun disappeared behind the foothills, now left 
behind by the climbing train that all night would be 
panting through the mountains ahead; was staring still 
when she saw the moon come up above the stony valley 
they traversed, where a roaring river tore over enor- 
mous rocks; the moon which these days rose for her 
only to sorrowful brightness. 

The train swerved, the moon disappeared, and she 
staring at the night only, shivered. The wheels rat- 
tled; the shrieking wail of the whistle came back with 
melancholy cadence from the hills; the train roared 
as it rushed across a bridge. Her heart was seized by 
terror and despair. She feared nature; this nature 
that she gazed on; that exists, it seemed to her, to bring 
to nothing that she has created. A sense of the noth- 
ingness of life overcame her; its futility overwhelmed 
her. 

****** 

War conditions did not make travel easy for the 
civilian traveler, and the coach was crowded. Khaki 
prevailed, worn in the main by young, or this-side mid- 


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dle-age, men with shoulder straps. One heard the 
murmur of their voices above the noise of the train, 
conversing one with another. There were two clear- 
eyed boys, their blonde hair roached, their cheeks rosy, 
in sailor clothes. 

Ellen Jackson, alert and alive in her decent black 
dress and black hat, sat facing Lucy. She was cheerful 
when she traveled. 

A jandered nature ordinarily, so her kin said of 
her, change and variety enlivened her. The fact that 
luxury in war time is taboo, was a novelty. 

“I’ve been sitting here asking myself how many times 
I’ve come and went over this road with ol’ Miss, and 
never occupy a seat outside the drawin’ room before.” 

01’ Miss! Meaning the grandmother of Lucy. 
The beloved dead; recalling them tears the heart; but 
they are ours, safe and past harm, bedded in the deep 
safe grave of our remembrance. But with the dead 
in life, with Stephen 

Ellen traveling, was Ellen at her best. She came 
back from assisting a mother with a fretting baby. 

“You see that woman two seats along, Miss Lucy? 
The one that looks used to hard work? She’s going to 
her boy, who’s in a camp with pneumonia. She’s never 
been on a sleeper before.” 

Lucy got up and went to her. These were days 
when even the habitually reserved did the incredibly 
unexpected thing. She was a hardy woman, past mid- 
dle age, tall and spare, the muscles of her face fixed 
and severe, visibly a person used to simple customs. 

It did not take long to know all. She was a widow, 
a tailoress who ran a little shop for repairing and 
mending in her home town. She had raised her two 
boys unaided from babyhood. She was hurrying to 


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the oldest who was at Camp Devon, in Massachusetts. 
It was her first journey farther than thirty miles from 
home in her life. 

She did not speak of the other boy; but after a little 
arose and spread a suitcase open on the seat before her. 
Its contents exposed, she was confused; a second pair 
of corsets; a second cheap wash blouse; a nightgown; 
underwear; a comb of black rubber, and a wooden- 
backed hairbrush. 

She found a clipping cut from a newspaper, and 
handed it to Lucy. She watched her as she read it: 

Boone Lacey, who was drafted for 
service in the American Army in the 
beginning of the war, has been killed at 
the front. He is the son of Mrs. Sallie 
Cowgill Lacey, known and esteemed by 
her many friends in this town; a son of 
Mann Lacey deceased ; and a descendant 
of the Boones, Cowgills, and Laceys, 
pioneer settlers in the early history of 
this section of the state. The Big Sandy 
district is proud of its sons. 

Who can explain the ways of grief? Or read the 
workings of the human heart? Lucy who never again 
saw this plain, tall woman with the impassive face 
was strangely comforted. She felt that for some rea- 
son which she could not make clear to her reasoning, 
she owed this chance companion a debt. 

It may have been a realization of the common heri- 
tage of mutual woe ; it may have been a renewed sense 
of woe’s universality; it may have been a comprehen- 
sion that of women, it is the plain and simple woman 
who, in war, pays the most. Not only that she is the 
feeblest and offers the least resistance; but because she 
least understands what war is about, and visualizes few 


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if any of the compensations to the world that are sup- 
posed at once to be the price and the rewards of the 
sacrifice. And who when the struggle is ended has 
only her muteness, and her dead. 

****** 

The train not only was late getting into New York, 
but faithful to the conditions holding in war time, was 
very late. Ellen Jackson, again the grim major-domo, 
took no chances. She had a full comprehension that 
among this war’s manifestations, a congested transfer 
service was one. Followed by Lucy, and attended by 
a Red Cap, she emerged with the crowd into the con- 
course of the Pennsylvania Station. She had seen the 
trunks put on the train at Ashe; she kept an eye on 
them along the way; there are ways to do these things 
if one is an Ellen Jackson trained by an old Lucy 
Wing. She now led her Red Cap and Lucy in search 
of them. Being what she was, outwardly subservient 
and inwardly invincible, when she and Lucy left the 
station in a taxicab, the two trunks, the one large and 
the other small, were with them. 

“You never know what you’re going to be obliged 
to have out of your trunk, or when,” she said with 
satisfaction. The next hour proved that she was right. 

The cab crossed town through Thirty-fourth Street. 
It wanted twenty minutes yet to seven o’clock. Lucy 
knew London and Paris, and in lesser degree knew 
Rome, Berlin and Vienna; but New York ever seemed 
to her, the temperamental city of them all, bewildering, 
emotional, responsive, illusive; always it lured and 
beckoned her; always she seemed about to touch and 
forever grasp the heart and soul of it. 

She looked upon the familiar scenes; the evening 
crowds already on the streets and surging against the 


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hurrying thousands still homeward bound; the ceaseless 
traffic; the moving lines of surface cars; the rumble and 
roar- overhead of the elevated at Sixth Avenue; the 
towering masses of buildings rising here and there 
above the general sky line, insubstantial and dreamlike 
in the dusk, their hundreds of windows still alight. 

At Fifth Avenue, the cab after making futile efforts 
to nose its way, now here, now there, through the jam 
of vehicles, came to a stop. Traffic ahead was at a 
halt, blocked by a teeming crowd that packed sidewalk 
and street alike solidly. 

It was a pushing, curious, jostling and good-natured 
crowd, men and women, boys and young girls. As 
Lucy and Ellen gazed out upon it, it suddenly went 
wild, as a nimble person in a business suit ran lightly up 
the ladder of a fire truck drawn up at the curb; and 
suddenly reversing himself and hanging by his nimble 
toes above their heads, entered into nonchalant dia- 
logue, question and answer with the cheering, jubilant 
pack below. A placard on a standard on the truck 
announced his name as a popular movie star. 

“Are you Americans?” 

“Yes !” A thousand voices in vociferous affirmative 
responded. 

“Then buy a Liberty Bond before you leave here; 
and if you’ve bought one, buy another. Hands up, 
who’ll buy?” 

The hands shot up. And as the taxicab extricated 
itself by backing out, the nimble gentleman had drawn 
himself right end up, and, poised on the topmost rung 
of the ladder, was leading in a cheer as a stalwart male 
in kilties appeared on the truck below, introduced by a 
second placard as “A Lady from Hell.” 

Lucy, as she left the scene, told herself that this spec- 


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tacle but reconfirmed her claim, that the peoples of 
themselves are never at war. That the something 
which her grandmother called bellicose ardors , has to 
be artificially created, and artificially stimulated once 
it exists. 

She tapped on the glass. Why need she and Ellen 
hurry to their hotel? 

The chauffeur turned. 

“Go down Broadway, and bring us up Fifth 
Avenue.” 

On their return journey, as they crossed Twenty- 
third Street at Madison Square, that stoic, Ellen, who 
had faced the pyramids, outwardly at least unmoved, 
broke into acclaim. 

“For the dear Lawd’s sake, Miss Lucy!” 

Fifth Avenue stretched ahead, brilliant, gleaming; 
its hundreds of windows, conservation notwithstand- 
ing, reckless with lights to-night; a street of banners; 
a way of flags; an aisle of light and color, unimaginable 
and unsurpassable. 

Avenue of the Allies, a thoroughfare spanned high 
overhead adown its center, for three and a half miles, 
by the multi-colored buntings of twenty-six nations; 
the history of the world was present in these fluttering 
folds; their every undulation a seeming jubilate of 
triumphing; their manifold billowing colors, a Te Deum 
of soundless shout. At once the symbolized hope and 
cry of mankind, history here was assembled in a new 
reading; its spelling that of a new unity. So for the 
moment, did the marvelous pageant speak to the sud- 
denly quickened heart of Lucy. 

The cab sped along the asphalt, overlooked by the 
facades of Broadway, the towering point of the Flat- 
iron Building, and the peak of the Metropolitan tower; 


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then stopped, blocked again, and this time by a pro- 
cession. 

A heavy-footed and serious-faced company of stolid 
folk these, taking their business with gravity; a group 
as it proved, of representatives of one of the little peo- 
ples recently declared a nation. Arrived here by some 
miscarriage before their scheduled time, they were 
come with their newly authorized flag to make ac- 
knowledgment, and give thanks at the Altar of Liberty. 
They halted before it in some confusion in mid-street, 
re-forming before they approached. A grave and seri- 
ous folk they were, the women in their native dress, 
short full skirts of wool, full white sleeves, bodices and 
aprons; the men in breeches strapped at the knees, 
loose-fitting shirts and jackets. 

The Altar of Liberty, that faced them across the 
wide sidewalk, loomed dreamlike behind its gold- 
tipped standards and their flags; ghostly white against 
the gulf of black shadow of the park between it and 
the high straight Metropolitan tower, dreamlike in 
its turn, and white against the sky. 

There would seem indeed to be a hitch, since the 
altar already was bespoken, and some nature of pro- 
gram taking place. Or were these community singers 
here to assist in the coming program and merely filling 
in the gap? From the group that stood upon the plat- 
form, led by a male voice and a cornet, rose the words 
and strains, richly rendered and melodious, of “Old 
Black Joe.” 

To the bitter all things are bitter. Lucy laughed 
aloud, rapped on the glass, and directed the chauffeur 
to get along. It alike was comical, and was grotesque, 
that even community singers in war time could so lack 
the requisite imagination, and greet a newly free 


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and still hopeful little people with a song, the voice, 
as it were, of the Negro race in America. 

The car made its way on up the Avenue. Lucy 
looked at Ellen beside her. Few negroes in America 
definitely can place themselves in their past. Lucy 
knew it as a fact vouched for by Colonel Tecumseh 
Craig, and again by her grandmother, that the mother 
of Ellen was brought from the Congo to Jekyl Island 
as late as the early ’50’s, on the private yacht 
“Wanderer.” And that the owner of this yacht, a 
northern man by the name of Corrie, was expelled from 
his yacht club in 1859 for having used his boat for such 
purposes. A story that survived in Lucy’s home com- 
munity through Colonel Te who, still fiercely unrecon- 
structed, brought it to life when put on the defensive 
by his northern acquaintances. 

For twelve years of Ellen’s life she was a slave; for 
fifty-four years to this present moment she was a ser- 
vant to the more fortunate race that freed her. 

What at this moment were her thoughts? Lucy 
wondered as they rolled along the flag-decked avenue. 
What were her speculations concerning the pageant 
she gazed on? Was it because of these unvoiced 
thoughts that her face as always was inscrutable; her 
eyes as ever noncommittal? Lucy had lived her life 
beside this brown-skinned woman; day in and day out; 
from infancy to motherhood; and she, as she admitted 
now, had no idea. 

Assuming that Ellen knew the past story of her race 
in America, did she know the present-day position of 
the Negro and his citizenship in the United States? 
One-ninth of the population, and after sixty years of 
emancipation, the victim of wide-spread disfranchise- 


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ment and loss of civic rights; of discrimination in 
economic opportunity; of lawlessness, including lynch- 
ing and burning. Triumphant and glorious example of 
man made free under the Fourteenth Amendment, — 
these were facts that, if flung from the Altar of Liberty, 
would bite like vitriol into flesh, into the sanguine satis- 
faction of these newly freed of the little people of the 
world. 

With Lucy it was a case of mea culpa. She could not 
spare herself. As she stood beside her grandmother 
in a London drawing-room the winter before the war, 
she had drawn herself up as with a galvanic shock, to 
see her English hostess greet a Negro guest; as it 
proved, a music composer and song writer. 

At the moment Lucy was talking to a brown-skinned 
Oxford student, an Egyptian youth with a rippling high- 
bridged nose, and keen black eyes; and her grand- 
mother close at hand talked Tagore with an East In- 
dian in a jeweled turban. 

She told herself now as then, that behind these two 
races, the Indian and the Egyptian, stretched two great 
civilizations; and behind the third race, lay no such 
thing. 

But say to herself what she might, a sense of the 
misery of life anew swept over her; of the helplessness 
everywhere in the world about her; at hand as else- 
where ; the cruelties from which, to those who suffered, 
no way of present escape offered. 

She thought of Stephen; and of the chances of final 
rectitude to a world afflicted, through the agencies that 
he gave himself to further. And her heart for one so 
young was skeptical — she was her grandmother’s child 
— was bitter indeed. 


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Fifth Avenue stretched ahead, glorious with lights, 
transcendent with color, a street pageant not easy to 
equal again in the history of the world. For her its 
glory was dimmed; its promise was as the hopes of the 
world too often in the past — a shadow of the substance, 
a travesty. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


I T was half past seven when Lucy and Ellen reached 
their rooms at the hotel. The day stretched back 
to the lifting mists of the Virginia mountains at 
sunup. It was not over for Lucy. She held two slips 
of paper, memoranda of telephone calls from War- 
rington Adams. He would know by now that her 
train was five hours late. 

The telephone rang. Lucy answered. 

“Mrs. Janvier?” 

“Yes.” 

“One moment, please.” 

Then the voice of Warrington. “Well, here at last. 
Welcome to our city. No time for formalities, as it 
happens. Tell me in a word, are you tired?” 

“Moderately so. It’s good to hear your voice, War- 
rington.” 

“I have to talk quickly. A thing has happened in- 
credible even in an old newspaper man’s experience. I 
have a chance to show you history being made. Can 
you get into evening togs and rush yourself to my office 
in a taxi? I can’t come to get you, and I can’t explain. 
Yes or no, quick?” 

“Yes.” 

“Good work. Ten minutes to dress, five to get to 
me here. Main entrance. I’ll have you met.” The 
telephone clicked. 

Ellen Jackson in the very nature of her was a fatalist. 
259 


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This may be one reason why she never lost her head. 
She had kept her eye on those trunks from Ashe to the 
present moment that saw them come in the door from 
the corridor. Her prescience was justified by a word 
to her now from Lucy. With unruffled calm she pro- 
duced her keys, and as Lucy’s trunk was set down in the 
adjoining bedroom she unlocked it. She paused in the 
act of taking a black evening dress from its hanger. 

“Can’t go without eating,” she said. And after her 
own fashion of achieving what she purposed, she pres- 
ently opened the door to an attendant with a tray, as 
Lucy, now dressed, turned to pick up her wrap. 

She approached the girl, a cup of hot bouillon in her 
hand. 

“Drink it.” 

Lucy drank it. She wondered if she ever had dis- 
obeyed Ellen. 

****** 

It took her just four minutes to reach the great mod- 
ern building that housed Warrington’s paper. He 
met her on an upper floor as she and the messenger who 
had waited for her below emerged from the elevator. 
She heard the quick tap of his crutch before she saw 
him, the witness that life had betrayed him also. 

He beamed as he caught sight of her, a short, square 
man of thirty-one. Nature had given him a set of 
features that scoffed at tragedy. Chief of these was a 
nose like to a Punchinello’s. His eyes, small and close- 
set, were alert, kindly, and — watchful. In moments of 
intensity they took on the piercing quality of the hawk’s. 
Here was a person to be reckoned with, a force already 
deferred to in this office. 

****** 

On Warrington’s part, he saw, as Lucy stepped out 


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the elevator doorway, a woman slim and elegant, at- 
tended by all the charm and lure of modish and costly 
apparel. Her voluminous evening wrap was fallen 
apart, its open collar of fur revealing a white throat 
and a suggestion of white shoulder. Her face which 
was like a smooth and flawless white flower looked its 
relief to see him appear. 

He loved her with a cruel and terrible intensity, pow- 
erful and at times insupportable, this wife of his miss- 
ing friend. He had fallen in love with her before 
Stephen met her, having known her first as a fledgling 
girl, and as a young woman of fineness and charm. 

Lucy saw only that he, as ever, beamed at beholding 
her. His left hand was occupied with his crutch. His 
right hand shot out with a little approving pat upon her 
shoulder. There was a becoming freedom about War- 
rington, very far from familiarity, that in its hearti- 
ness and cheer made for ease and enjoyment. 

‘‘Quick work, sister. I can depend on you. Come 
along briskly now. In exactly six minutes you and I 
will be in our taxi beating it round to 39th and good old 
Broadway. Tell me in a word, how are you, my dear?” 

He did not wait for her answer. He threw open a 
door and led her through the room revealed, to a com- 
municating room beyond it. She was conscious of the 
click, as of telegraph instruments, and was aware of a 
figure here and there, busy with its own concerns. 

Warrington, taking a bit of paper that a young 
man went and fetched, handed it to Lucy. It was in- 
credibly thin and smooth and tough, like onion skin, and 
bore printed, or were they typewritten characters? 
Her eyes followed the opening words, and then lifting, 
stared at Warrington. 

He nodded in answer. Then fell to tweaking that 


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grotesquely great nose — poor proboscis — with a fore- 
finger knuckle, outrageously. 

“The unofficial text it is, Lucy, of perhaps the most 
momentous diplomatic note in the history of the world. 
It came in less than an hour ago, a complete surprise. 
The way in which the wireless sent in a dispatch of such 
tremendous import shatters all precedents. We tele- 
phoned the State Department at Washington, and 
neither they nor yet the Swiss Legation, have received 
any word of it. It evidently has not yet been trans- 
mitted through the regular channels. Wirelessed from 
Nansen, it must have been caught up in France, and 
cabled over.” 

He motioned with his free right hand to the paper. 
“Read it, my dear. That’s why I asked you to come to 
me here. It’s the opening of events to come, so stu- 
pendous no man as yet can dare predict the end; the 
reaching of the crucial climax in the greatest of all 
wars.” 

Her eyes returned to the paper in her hand, so thin, 
so transparent, and with its import so momentous. 

Berlin, October 12, 1918. 

In reply to the questions of the President of the United 
States of America, the German Government hereby replies: 
The German Government has accepted the terms laid down by 
President Wilson in his address of January 8, and in his sub- 
sequent addresses on the foundation of a permanent peace of 
justice. Consequently its object in entering into discussion 
would be only to agree upon the practical details of the ap- 
plication of these terms. The German Government believes 
that the Governments of the powers associated with the Govern- 
ment of the United States also takes the position taken by Presi- 
dent Wilson in his address. 

The German Government, in accordance with the Austro- 


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Hungarian Government, for the purpose of bringing about an 
armistice, declares itself ready to comply with the proposition 
of the President in regard to evacuation. The German 
Government suggests that the President may occasion the meet- 
ing of a mixed commission for making the necessary arrange- 
ments concerning the evacuation. 

The present German Government, which has undertaken the 
responsibility for this step towards peace, has been formed by 
conference and in agreement with the great majority of the 
Reichstag. The Chancellor supported in all his actions by 
the will of the majority, speaks in the name of the German 
Government and of the name of the German people. 

(Signed) Solf. 

State Secretary of Foreign Affairs. 

Lucy here looked at Warrington again. Her lips 
had parted, and her eyes were wide. She was to be for- 
given, poor, unhappy child, wife of Stephen, that she 
saw it first as it affected her personally. 

Again Warrington nodded. “It may mean all to 
you, or nothing, my dear. I wanted you to see the copy, 
to handle it, to visualize it.” 

He took the paper from her fingers. 

“History in the concrete it is, we may say, held by 
you in your two hands. I venture to say you as yet, 
beyond the heads of the staffs in the New York news- 
paper offices, are one of the probable dozen in this coun- 
try to know what has happened.” 

He swung to the table on his crutch and laid the copy 
down; said a word to a young man, and returned to 
Lucy. 

“Now let’s beat it. I’ve done half a day’s work in 
the half hour since I called you, that we may have the 
next couple of hours free. Unless between here and 
there we fall afoul of traffic troubles, do you know 


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where we’re going to find ourselves in five minutes from 
now?” 

He on his crutch was quicker than most who are bet- 
ter qualified, this victim from his birth of congenital 
hip trouble. He and Lucy were back in the corridor, 
and in another moment he touched the button for the 
elevator. 

As for Warrington, as they waited, his heart thudded 
hideously. She had looked at him as he put his ques- 
tion. A look of inquiry it was, but so kind, so full of 
sweetness for him, her friend to whom she always was 
grateful, that he groaned within himself for his help- 
lessness under it. 

Always she afforded him joy; about her for him was 
a natural ability to please; an instinct for what to him 
was unerringly the desirable, and the delightful thing, 
in woman. To the world doubtless she was a little cool 
and removed. But he loved this in her also, and for 
selfish reasons; if to the most she was withdrawn, to 
him she was ever gentle ; if to the many she was cold, to 
him she invariably was tender. 

“Don’t keep me waiting forever, Warrington. 
Where are we going?” 

They had entered the elevator, briskly crowded. 
He nodded to this man, and to that one; some were 
without hats, going from one floor to another; and one 
was in his shirt sleeves. His voice lowered as he 
answered her : 

“His nobs, the President of these United States, and 
his party, left the Waldorf-Astoria, as the Associated 
Press got its answer from Washington in regard to this 
cable; he is on his way to the Metropolitan Opera 
House to attend the concert given this evening for the 
benefit of the Queen Margarita fund for the Blinded 


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Soldiers of Italy. This is the twelfth of October, Co- 
lumbus Day, you grasp. Italy has recovered and 
proved herself and come into line on issues bigger than 
her own self-interest, and we in America feel vociferous 
about it, and want to hand her a bouquet in congratula- 
tion. Thus it happens that Mr. Wilson, on his way to 
the Metropolitan, possibly the person in the world 
most individually concerned, knows nothing of the re- 
ceipt of this German note.” 

They had left the elevator, and were hurrying 
through the doorway to their cab at the curb. War- 
rington kept up his running fire of talk. 

“In eight minutes by that clock on the wall back 
there, the President is due to take his seat in his box. 
You will have taken yours by then, I trust. Don’t ask 
me how I secured two seats in a box at this hour. All 
but grand larceny went into the business of getting 
em. 

He saw her into the taxicab and himself followed. 
“You and his nobs being seated, while the house is hav- 
ing its once-over of its great man, arrives a messenger 
from the Associated Press, who hands into the Presi- 
dent’s box a copy of the momentous note; you and I 
and certain others of the newspaper fraternity, the 
only creatures in the audience who are behind the 
secret.” 

The cab stopped in line. 

“Here we are, my dear. See ’em coming. Like a 
first night in the prehistoric days before the war.” 

Warrington, apart from being stamped by his lame-* 
ness, was a marked man. Stocky and heavy, with tre- 
mendous shoulders, his face observant and intent, he 
already was known as a coming personality, and as 
such was being recognized now, here and there in the 


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crowded lobby. Whether through the sheer force of 
his quick-driving personality, or because of his crutch; 
or because he was conceded a coming notable man, a 
lane made itself for him and his companion whom he 
was piloting. 

Lucy following behind him, gave a quick, small cry: 
“Oh! Warrington!” 

But when he turned, she shook her head and mo- 
tioned him to proceed. 

“I thought I knew some one in the crowd, but I was 
wrong. This man was in evening dress, and the one I 
had in mind is a workingman, careless, and rough- 
looking.” 

The incident was so evidently on her mind that after 
they passed in and were headed for the stairway, War- 
rington swung about again, and looked at her inter- 
rogatively. 

“Anything wrong?” 

“No. And if it were the man I fancied, a one-time 
quasi friend at home, of mine and Stephen’s, I’ve no 
explanation even for myself, of why I was so agitated. 
I’ll tell you of this person another time.” 

He went ahead at this, looking about him this way 
and that, with quick turns of his great head, aggressive 
and pervasive; Lucy following beside him and his 
crutch, up the stairs, herself a compelling figure in her 
costly black; the crowd about them shifting and chang- 
ing each moment of their progress. 

Every nature of allied uniform seemed here, come 
to do honor to Italy, recovered and victorious, and 
hailed a full brother at arms, high-minded and disin- 
terested; the belted khaki of the English and the 
Canadian; the olive-drab of the American; the gray- 
blue of the Frenchman; there a group of aviators with 


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267 


the golden spread wings upon their left breasts; here 
the natty blue of the navy; cynosure of every eye, a tall 
Greek soldier in his national costume, looking like a 
ballet-dancer; and, easily predominating to-night, the 
Italian in his blue — Alpini, Grenadier, and the feather- 
crested Bersaglieri — guests from Italy at the moment, 
and for the occasion. 

Women also flashed and shimmered by them on the 
stairs, their satin slippers twinkling, their wraps thrown 
wide because of the mildness of the evening, their arms 
and white shoulders gleaming. 

Blocking the passage outside the parterre boxes, a 
young girl stepped forward, and put a program in 
Lucy’s hand. She had a cool and matter-of-fact little 
face, and was clad, or un-clad as one took it, in a span- 
gled white gown none too fresh, about her elbows and 
her shoulder blades, a wispy length of blue tulle that 
had seen better days. 

Her air was altogether of business. Having put the 
program into Lucy’s hand, she turned and calmly ex- 
pectant, briskly demanded a dollar for it from War- 
rington, who at this suddenly unbent, grinning as he 
recognized her. 

“What? Another holdup, Peggy? After that one 
by you Sunday night at the Hippodrome?” 

“The regulation price, Warrington. It’s for Italy’s 
blind this time. Go down and fetch it up, please.” 

“Broadway?” Lucy inquired as they resumed their 
way, “Chorus?” 

“Chorus nothing. Go feed yourself to the hungry 
sharks for that. I took it that of course you knew 
each other. It’s my own small cousin, little Peggy 
Tewksbury, granddaughter of the great and only 
K. E. She sees me calmly, not alone as a steady source 


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of supply, but as a perpetual asset. She comes to the 
office very near daily, presupposing space and favors of 
me, because her especial war organization’s plans re- 
quire ’em. She’s a great little level-head, strictly busi- 
ness, her grandfather’s own cool and always definite 
grandchild. Oh, we’ve types and types; brought out 
by this war.” 

They reached their box. Lucy saw a house already 
filled from floor to topmost gallery, and ablaze with 
the flags of every allied nation, the green, red and white 
of Italy predominant. She was removing her wrap 
when the great orchestra stopped, checking itself, and 
as instantly began “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the 
audience rising as one — pit, grand tier, parterre, bal- 
conies, glittering curve above curve; and, amid a tu- 
mult of applause, the bravos of foreign voices, and the 
cheers of the gallery, the President, the Italian Ambas- 
sador, and their party entered their box. 

A sense of excitement seized Lucy as it swept over 
her why she was here in the Metropolitan Opera 
House, gazing at the man on whom the hopes of the 
world had centered, whether for weal or for woe; 
either the wisest man in his time, the great figure of 
history; or the veriest platitudinarian that ever carried 
the peoples. Unknown to herself, the hand of Lucy 
sought her bodice against her heart, which beat 
unwontedly. 

She had never seen Mr. Wilson before. There was 
a shock of the unexpected, that this superlatively im- 
maculate person in evening clothes was he. His hair 
was whiter than she had anticipated. On the contrary, 
here was an erectness and a vitality of bearing unex- 
pected. Bowing to the welcoming tumult his eyes sur- 


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269 


veyed the house, sweeping the stage with its pageant 
of Metropolitan chorus, and military band of the Royal 
Italian Grenadieri ; and as they traveled, smiled sponta- 
neously. The smile about the mouth, on the contrary, 
seemed mechanical, and even fixed; the White House 
smile, the grandmother of Lucy had called it, as applied 
to other incumbents. 

The long, bony jaw of this man in the central box 
of the horseshoe was set with a grimness, however, that 
better seemed to tell the story of the amazing career; 
ten years ago a college president, a schoolmaster; this 
smiling man standing in the foreground of the Morgan 
box; to-night the chief magistrate of a hundred million 
people, and the dominant figure of the world. 

The orchestra of the Royal Italian Grenadieri, suc- 
ceeding the American anthem, broke into the national 
hymn of Italy. The house, pit to galleries, Italian 
and allies, guests and hosts, went mad, a thousand 
flags breaking forth in a thousand madly up-flung 
hands, shouts and bravos arising. Hand in hand at 
this great moment were Italy and America ! Surely 
this pledged friendship would never fail one the other ! 

The chief figure in the house, standing as before, 
gazed on the scene of brilliancy, furor and color, 
his eyes still smiling. 

Lucy suddenly was conscious of the thought and the 
care that had arranged for her presence here. She 
turned about to the figure standing at her side. 

“Oh, Warrington, you do know that I’m grateful 
to you for this?” 

“Look !” he handed her a pair of glasses. 

A crucial moment in world history this. The Gren- 
adieri were come to the final strains of their anthem. 


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A figure from the group flanking the President, had 
stepped to the back of the box, and was receiving a 
slip of paper handed in. 

“Tumulty,” said Warrington, at Lucy’s elbow. 

He unfolded and looked at the paper, and handed 
it to a second person, a tall, slight man with eminently 
the face of the man-of-thought who, at the whispered 
word that accompanied the presentation, read it. 

“Colonel Edward House,” said Warrington. 

He returned it to the secretary, who advanced and 
gave it to Mr. Wilson; Colonel House left the box. 

A sound as of wind passing over a forest followed 
as the audience sat down. 

The President now seated, glancing down at the 
paper seemed to stiffen, to rigidly become taller; the 
fingers that held the bit of paper tightened upon it as 
he read. 

Then his hand fell, closing upon the copy of the 
German note, and for full a moment he gazed ahead, 
his eyes fixed, his lips parted, clairvoyant, one would 
say; the look of one seeing a great and longed-for goal 
ahead! The long jaw suddenly set itself. And with 
this he passed the paper first to his wife on his one 
hand; and then to the Italian Ambassador on his other. 
Two minutes had covered the episode. 

****** 

Lucy, seated now, let her gaze sweep about the house. 
She caught Warrington’s arm. 

“There’s the man I thought I knew, and I was right. 
He is downstairs, standing in the back of the 
aisle opposite us. The first time 1 saw him he wore 
a workman’s clothes, and carried a dinner bucket. He 
disappeared at the time the war opened. Warrington, 
will you think I’m quite, quite beside myself, when I say 


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I’m convinced he has some word, some knowledge 
,he can give me of Stephen? He’s gone; lost in the 
crowd; forgive me; now I’ll turn about and attend to 
business.” 

****** 

Warrington watched her, she watching the stage; 
taking note of the changes in her since he last had seen 
her, at midsummer of this same year. He thought 
of her as she had been four years before. Her per- 
ceptions sharpened by sorrow and experience, she vis- 
ibly was changed; older, unbelievably so, with a quiet 
that cut him to the heart; a grievously wounded soul. 
Her thin but beautiful shoulders sloped wearily into 
as beautiful but listless arms. The little shadow that 
marked the springing of her throat, marked a sharp- 
ening also of the lines and contours of her neck and 
throat. 

Warrington never blinked facts. He was not made 
that way. He loved her with all the terrible force 
that lay in his short, thick, powerful body. Not that 
he feared himself in this. There are circumstances 
that are beyond any conceived obligation of mere 
honor. The present case was one of these; where to 
fail, or where so much as to consider the chance of fail- 
ing, was inconceivable. Nothing could move him from 
his moral anchorage here ; he absolutely was convinced 
of this. 

It was one of the ironies, that no person who knew 
Lucy and Stephen prior to their engagement would have 
conceived of them as in any sense complementary. Yet 
once they were seen together in this relationship, it 
became impossible to conceive of them otherwise than 
as triumphantly complementary. The girl did well, did 
right, to choose Stephen. For veritable charm of body 


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and spirit in a man, Warrington put Stephen first. He 
possessed indeed that blessing reserved for the few, joy 
of the spirit. Looking at Lucy now, and recalling the 
two as they were here in New York in their brief 
union of those short weeks, he thought of the great 
loves and young lovers of time and story; Hero and 
Leander; Francesca and Paola; Heloi'se and Abelard. 

As for himself? Warrington’s big shoulders 
shrugged, while his glance dwelt with the hunger of the 
unsatisfied on the curve of the white shoulder, lifted 
to the colorless cheek, and passed caressingly over the 
small shapely head so inexpressibly dear to him. His 
was an intelligence that spared no one, himself least of 
any, but cut to the bone and laid truth bare. What 
matter if it also lay quivering? His love for this 
woman here beside him should not degenerate into a 
scourge for the senses only; if it was an agony and a 
torment, it had its moments of exaltation. 

Warrington did not decry himself; estimating his 
qualities shrewdly, and placing his values high. If the 
opinion were asked of one of his superiors at the 
newspaper office, this person likely would say that 
Adams was a far-sighted, hard-as-nails proposition, a 
tremendous worker, and a coming man. But neither 
did Warrington lose sight of what fashion and nature 
his qualities were. If Stephen in the eyes of the world 
stood for the modern Amadis of Gaul, the young man 
ideal of the twentieth century, he, Adams, was the 
brawny, pock-mocked, hard-hitting Du Guesclin, grim 
through an all-too-prevailing sense of reality. 

Warrington loved his work. He had a passion for 
shoving aside an accumulation of responsibilities at the 
crucial moment of the night’s stress and needs; to go 
downstairs in his building and stand and watch the 


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273 


silently whirling great presses. It was an amazing 
thing to see the news of the world caught up, printed, 
folded, sorted, and thrown out in sets of fifty daily 
papers each. It overwhelmed the mind, and stunned 
the imagination, however often he beheld it. 

The silently revolving presses, fed with paper from 
the floor above, from rolls weighing many tons, were 
Gargantuan mouths, monster-spawned, insatiable, un- 
appeasable, calling always for more. It need not mat- 
ter what this more is, so that within a reasonable 
limit it exclude the merely average and the normal; 
that it smack reasonably big as compared in its di- 
mensions with the usual; war, famine, pestilence; storm, 
earthquake, holocaust; these were within the prescribed 
abnormalities; birth, death, marriage, divorce; indus- 
trial revolt and upheaval; mob violence; homicide, 
fratricide, suicide; the rise and fall of armies, and of 
nations; the assassination and the abdication of rulers, 
kings and emperors. 

So did it seem to Warrington it must be with the 
human soul that, at its close, would choose to be as a 
page close-written in the characters of life. Many 
things must write themselves thereon; such as desire, 
and also denial; torment, and also ecstasy; abnegation 
and satiety; worthinesses and smallnesses; triumphs 
and failures; decencies, lawlessness, rebellions, acqui- 
escence; these and much else must write themselves 
upon the soul of him who at the close would say, “I 
have lived!” 

****** 

Lucy turned. “Warrington, I find I can’t stand any 
more. The music, these too great choruses, the flags, 
the uniforms, a sense of what this German note really 
may mean — I’m a bit overwhelmed. May we go?” 


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He was up, his crutch in hand, on the instant. 
“Come along then, sister; it couldn’t be better in that 
case for me. I’ll go with you to your hotel, and we’ll 
have a bite of supper together, and then I’ll get a move 
on. My day is just beginning.” 

She looked at him piteously as she put her cloak on, 
aided by his by no means awkward help. He was the 
one person in the world to whom she unreservedly 
showed her weaknesses. 

“My courage failed me three days ago at home, 
Warrington. Each time it happens, I come on to you 
to be helped back to a point where I can go on.” 

“What! What am I hearing?” He shook his head 
at her horrifically. “Going to be a little hindering 
thing on my heart and hands some more, are you? 
And where, pray, am I to find the time for you, my 
work, the business of a passport, and the rest of it, that 
I may get over on the other side to be Blondel to my 
and your Richard?” 

But there was neither rancor nor impatience in his 
tones ; nor yet in the smile with which he regarded her. 
A hideously impatient man by nature and by reputa- 
tion, there was not that in Lucy, so it would seem, that 
could irritate, nor yet exasperate him. 

****** 

Lucy in her bedroom said good night to Ellen. “I’ll 
undress slowly; I want to sleep when I do go to bed.” 

She closed her door with this, and locked it. Slipped 
out of her dress and into a negligee, and stopped; stand- 
ing still; looking long and eagerly about the room. It 
was the moment for which she had lived since three 
days ago she determined to come east. 

This was the room, this the little suite, in which she 


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275 


passed the short weeks of her married life with Stephen. 
She doubtlessly had done a wicked thing, since in 
Europe there were women and children, homeless and 
starving. She since had held as her own this little 
suite, a fact known only to Ellen. Retaining it as a 
refuge; a place to which she might flee as to Stephen 
himself; and find safety as within his arms, and solace 
as upon his breast. 

On that February day so far receded, Stephen and 
Warrington, Helen, and Mr. Janvier, had met her and 
Kitty at the train gate. They had gone, the group of 
them, directly from the train to the municipal building. 
From there they came uptown to the chantry at Grace 
Church, where by prearrangement, she and Stephen 
were married. For the short weeks following for her 
and Stephen, this was their hotel, this their suite, this 
their bedroom. 

She up-flung her arms at this point, turning where 
she stood, and walking about. This way, through too 
poignant recall, lay the madness she must fight. 

Her mind went back to yet another happening of this 
evening. As she left the Opera House, she saw 
Eugene Lelewel again, and called his name. 

He was leaving, too, one of a group of several men 
going out through the lobby together. 

He must have heard; she could have sworn he 
glanced at her. His nerves were of the sort evidently 
not to be surprised or stampeded. He made no sign, 
passing on ahead of her, and out the door. 

It confirmed for her what she as by instinct knew — 
that he could tell her something of Stephen. Nor did 
Warrington laugh at her when she told him this. Nor 
yet did he decry the second message come to her over 


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the telephone. A happening, he said, by no means to be 
discounted because it savored of the unexplainable. He 
was too good a newspaper man, he hoped, to discount 
until disproven, any clew. Why shouldn’t prisoners 
escaped by way of Ghent have word for her? There 
was nothing fantastic in this as a possibility; nor was 
it in itself unreasonable. Such things, outcome of this 
war, were happening every day. 

****** 

Dwelling on these matters, she fought off crowding 
thoughts more poignant; thoughts like the fabled gadfly 
ever pursuing; knowing that in the end it would prove 
of no avail. 

She fled to these rooms in this hotel as a refuge 
when all else failed her. There was another chamber, 
and this one in her own heart, which she never willingly 
opened; but that always was with her. A chamber 
where was locked a knowledge. She had not forgotten, 
and could not forget, that Stephen of his own elec- 
tion, left her; that it had rested with himself; that his 
country then was a spectator, and uncommitted; and 
she had not yet forgiven him. 

This was why life failed her; this was why she wan- 
dered restless; why, for the most, she thrust her little 
son from her; why, in the direction of certain recalls, 
madness lay. This was why she clung to anything, 
however fantastic, which promised sign or sound out 
of the silence, that would quiet or comfort her bitter 
soul. 

She looked about her in the bedroom now; seeking 
distraction that would afford respite, and caught up the 
evening papers that Warrington, always prodigal, left 
with her; opened the bundle of them; and on a front 
page read: 


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London — Cable . — Prince Antoine Gas- 
ton Philippe of Bourbon-Orleans, great- 
grandson of King Louis Philippe of 
France, has died in a military hospital 
from injuries suffered in the fall of an 
airplane. 

He was flying from France to England 
and was forced to make a landing at 
Old Southgate. The plane got out of 
control and crashed into a cottage. The 
pilot was killed and the Prince fatally 
injured. 

Prince Antoine was the son of Prince 
Gaston, Count d’Eu, and Princess Isa- 
belle of Braganza. He was born in 
1881 and early in the war was a Captain 
in the Royal Canadian Dragoons. 

Prince Antoine, who through his 
mother was a grandson of the last 
Emperor of Brazil, and through his 
father a great-grandson of King Louis 
Philippe of France, after having sought 
in vain service in the French army at 
the beginning of the war, succeeded in 
securing a commission in one of the 
Canadian cavalry corps at the front in 
France, and won promotion to the rank 
of Captain, as well as the English War 
Cross. 

Like his two elder brothers he re- 
ceived his military training in Austria, 
being, a scion of a formerly reigning 
house in France, barred from St. Cyr, or 
any of the other State military acad- 
emies in France. Like his brothers too, 
he was awarded a commission of Lieu- 
tenant of Reserves in the Sixth Regi- 
ment of Austrian Hussars. Jointly with 
them he severed his connection with the 
Austrian army, returned his Austrian 
orders and distinctions to the late 
Emperor Francis Joseph, and withdrew 
from all Austrian clubs and associations 
as soon as ever Austria declared war 
upon France. It will be remembered 


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that his father served as a Captain on 
the Staff of General McClellan in the 
Civil War, and was the author of a 
“History of the Civil War in America.” 

And that his great-grandfather, Louis 
Philippe, afterward Citizen-King of 
France, in his earlier years of exile, 
spent some time in America. 

Lucy thrust the paper from her and sank on the 
couch at hand, burying her face in her hands, her head 
bowed against the pillows. Forces greater than she 
spoke. 

How long she stayed there, her face in her hands, 
she did not know. She was stunned; dazed as by a 
lightning flash revealing the vast landscape of human 
life and its destiny. She was overcome as never before 
with a sense of the past in us. She saw that the acts, 
good or bad, do not die with the generation, or with 
the individual begetting them; nor yet their conse- 
quences; that the personal integrities, or the lack of 
these, do not cease with our demise. 

A terror came upon her; a necessity to search her 
thoughts and her acts, her attitudes and her deeds; 
aware that at some world crisis yet to come, she stood 
committed to speak through the generations ahead, 
through her own baby son, safe now in his home at 
Ashe. 

Again terror and questionings overcame her; and 
she found herself on her knees beside the couch, turning 
to God, crying His name aloud, and asking that He help 
her. 

***** * 

By and by she lifted herself, getting to her feet, 
dazed and faint, so that she was obliged to hold to the 
edge of the desk at hand. She went to her trunk, stand- 


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ing open against the wall. She turned the combina- 
tion lock of the small jewel drawer and took from 
this compartment what for her were its treasures. 
****** 

When she fell asleep, her face on the pillow pite- 
ously weary in its repose, these two treasures lay on the 
pillow beside her, her fingers still closed upon them. 

The one of these was a package of the letters written 
to her by her husband after he left her; in the event 
he did not return, a heritage for her son. The other 
was a baby’s absurdly small and fine white sock, saved 
for Stephen the father; the first footwear his son had 
worn, and proof of this wee person’s vigor, with the toe 
kicked through. 


CHAPTER XXV 


L UCY’S grandmother, great old girl, as Stephen 
so delighted to call this puissant octogenarian, 
had the name in her home city, of having a 
dining-acquaintance in more capitals of the world than 
any other woman in Kentucky; with her social roots 
thrust into soils everywhere. 

Some one on a time asked her why she was a life 
member of a certain club, standing for the allied arts, 
that houses itself in Gramercy Park in New York City. 
The question as put to her ran even pertinently: 

“Since if you’ve any really lively concern in any of 
the arts whatsoever, you’ve successfully concealed it, 
why a life member here?” 

Mrs. Wing’s reply was as direct: 

“Pm a life member of this club, if you must know, 
because it’s housed in Samuel Tilden’s home. I like the 
right to go there and break bread when I choose. It 
brings back a valued friend, and a political betrayal 
that turned me face about, and sent me ultimately into 
the Democratic party under Grover Cleveland. As for 
art, I get my gratification in that line, too. Carved in 
a mantel of the present dining room of this house, 
along with other native leaves and blossoms, is a bit of 
rat-tailed dock, homeliest of American weeds. Its 
replica here affords me remarkably keen pleasure, sug- 
gestive as it is of the homely savor that as a race 
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281 


characteristic is our own, leavening us, a diverse peoples, 
and proclaiming us American.’’ * 

Lucy and her grandmother, as the girl grasped now, 
had been singularly good and lively friends. The older 
intellect, that was tart, alert, and uncompromising, held 
the girl who herself was no fool. 

For the sake and the memory of this grandmother, 
Lucy, one Monday, went around to this club for lunch, 
having a guest’s privileges. It was November. She 
had lingered in New York, held by the talk of peace, 
and by Warrington’s plans that were in the making, to 
go over directly following this event. 

Sitting at a table awaiting her order, she looked 
about her. Stands of the allied flags brightened the 
dark paneling of the walls; as also did a little motor- 
corps girl, who in her natty uniform lunched at a near- 
by table; as did likewise the uniforms of a group of 
middle-aged naval officers at another table. 

War, everywhere war; or some expression of it. 
Was she wrong? Was it through artificial stimulations 
such as these that peoples were kept at their present 
high state of emotionalism, and therefore compliance? 
Were they tools the world over? Were they any- 
where, and in any sense, the originating and driving 
force in this world cataclysm? Did they in this speak 
of themselves, and with an accent not to be mistaken? 
Or were they ever dull of wit; quiescent; permitting 
the idea to be implanted? 

Her luncheon arrived here, and she gave it her 
attention. She was just from a visit with Mrs. Kings- 
ton Tewksbury, a friend of her grandmother; an old 
New Yorker of fortune, and of strong if circumscribed 
character. 

“A myopic provincial,” Mrs. Wing delighted to de- 


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fine her friend; “bourgeoise among citizens of the 
world; a tribal survival, crying to the world to save 
her from herself. I speak of Juliette Tewksbury, that 
was Juliette Wynne, and her heavy, faithful soul.” 

Seventy-odd years ago, the grandmother of Lucy 
came to the Wynne country home on the Hudson River 
for a visit; she was a girl of sixteen, and a pupil in a 
fashionable New York boarding and day school in 
Eleventh Street, a classmate of Sophie Wynne, the 
oldest daughter in the family. Juliette Wynne at the 
time was a child of nine. The intimacy then begun 
with the Wynne family had continued. 

Lucy was expected, and the man in bottle-green-and- 
buff livery, himself elderly and thin-shanked, who 
opened the door, delivered her over to a maid, who 
conducted her upstairs. 

Since Lucy was a child she paid one call, if no more, 
on Mrs. Tewksbury, on each visit to New York; and 
came once to dine. 

She was in her sitting room, off which her bedroom 
opened, and turned about in her chair before a table, 
as Lucy came in, ushered by the maid. 

She was an ugly old woman, large and stolid, with 
a big and bulbous nose; a person as heavily dutiful 
as she was heavily unimaginative; in her day as con- 
scientiously occupying the Tewksbury box at the Metro- 
politan Opera House on Monday nights as the Tewks- 
bury pew at a far downtown church on Sunday morn- 
ings. Her children were married; she had grand- 
children and great-grandchildren ; and lived alone with 
her servants since her husband died. Her black dress 
was ugly and uncompromising, a gown that any servant 
in her employ would have scorned. Heavy in manner, 
without tact or finesse, the last of a passing caste, of a 


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283 


day Victorian, the sovereign weight of accustomed 
power made her nevertheless a regal old woman. 

“Warrington gave me your message last night, my 
dear, that you would be to see me this forenoon. I 
had them call your hotel at once.” 

Lucy had met Warrington Adams in this house when 
she was seventeen years old. He was the great-nephew 
of Mrs. Tewksbury, a son of the original Sophie’s 
daughter; himself a Californian. 

Warrington never hid any Tights he could claim 
under a bushel; he was eminently practical. He made 
himself useful to his aunt from the time he settled in 
New York, the family connection undeniably being 
valuable. There were those who attributed to the 
connection some part in Warrington’s swift and spec- 
tacular rise in his profession; but in this they were 
wrong, it being inevitable, and due to the man himself. 

The heavy old woman turned, and nodded toward 
the table. She had put on great weight in middle life, 
and it made her movements ponderous. 

“I’m folding and directing circulars for my grand- 
daughter, Peggy. Her war-relief organization sent out 
appeals for secretarial help. I’m wondering if I could 
learn to use a typewriter? I’ve always felt I had it in 
me to make a business woman.” 

****** 

Lucy, at her lunch at the old club, recalled Mrs. 
Tewksbury’s laboriously meticulous table; the stack 
of circulars; the neat piles of envelopes; the checked- 
off lists; the tremulous and yet vigorous handwriting. 
Miss Leigh, the personal secretary of Mrs. Tewks- 
bury, relieved her alike of the burden of personal cor- 
respondence, of telephone conversations, of errands to 
the bank, and to the stores; represented her on com- 


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mittees, knowing indeed very much more about the 
affairs of her employer than this person herself. Her 
trustees, from time to time, as announced by the papers, 
took vast blocks of Liberty bonds in her name; and 
large sums were reported as given in her name, to war 
charities and relief committees. Mrs. Tewksbury, 
directing circulars laboriously, bore witness to that 
new-born necessity stirring within her at seventy-nine, 
as in her sister women of the day, to be actively and 
individually a part of the world’s work about her. 
****** 

Lucy sighed impatiently and rose, picked up her fur 
scarf, glanced at the motor-corps girl in her natty 
uniform, at the naval group in their trappings, and 
left the dining room; going through the main rooms 
of the club with their war-time quiet and emptiness. 

Descending to the lobby, she glanced at the clock on 
the wall above the heads of a row of colored-girl bell- 
hops and pages, further evidences of war-time and its 
exigencies. It was four minutes of one o’clock. 

Then with a glance at the women clerks in the office, 
she went out, a telling figure with an arresting type 
of face, that eyes always followed. 

She winked as the sudden bright light of the sunny 
midday greeted her; then looked to the blue of the 
arching sky above Gramercy Park; not the least of her 
joy in New York City coming from the effects it offers 
of light and color. 

She stared. The air, so crystalline and so shining, 
high above the roofs surrounding the square, was filled 

with a thousand, with a thousand times a thousand 

Were they pigeons? White pigeons? Her mind 
harked to Ashe, with its open lawn and its fantails, 
ever ascending, circling, and descending. The sky was 


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cloudless, true, but the air had an opalescent quality 
as when light shines through vapor. In this soft bril- 
liancy these innumerable floating, and as she deemed 
them, winged white objects, seemed of ethereal airi- 
ness and brightness; lifting, falling, soaring, stream- 
ing, not by thousands now, but by tens of thousands. 

Standing where she first had stopped, arrested, she 
lifted a hand to her forehead. Was the trouble with 
her, that she was unable to understand? She was 
dazed and bewildered. 

Then she was aware of divers deep-toned sounds 
filling the air, prolonged and blaring. Were they 
sirens? As she stood asking herself what they meant, 
the deeper notes were pierced by the sudden clamor 
of a hundred thousand shrieking whistles, coarse, flute- 
like or shrill. 

She turned, looking westward through 20th Street 
toward Broadway, a narrow thoroughfare between 
high canyon walls. Soft shining white objects were 
pouring, spouting, eddying from every window up and 
down the clifflike facades of every building. Some- 
thing urged her to the curb, where seen through an 
angle between cornices and roofs, the mounting white 
tower of the Metropolitan Building cleaved the noon- 
day blue sky. A myriad windows pierced the gleaming 
shaft, and from each window of the myriad host eddied 
fresh accessions of white objects to those already sail- 
ing toward her on the current of the air, lifting and 
falling as they came. A streaming, shining host com- 
ing to join those already above the open square of 
Gramercy, which now fluttered down, to tree-top, to 
bush and shrub, to fountain, grass and gravel path, 
within the high iron fence. 

And now she realized that these drifting, settling, 


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myriad shining objects that streamed into the brilliancy 
of the day from everywhere were scraps of paper, 
large, small, square, oblong. 

A church bell clanged, madly and riotously; another 
rang out, more decorous with its single, deep-booming 
note again and again repeated; joined now by the peal- 
ing of many as unmistakably triumphant. The street 
in the moment had filled with people, pouring from 
every doorway and stoop about the four sides of the 
park. A man rushed from the Players’ Club next 
door, sprang into a great shining car at the curb which 
flashed away. Mechanically Lucy glanced at the watch 
on her wrist. It was one o’clock. 

People sprung from everywhere, were running toward 
Broadway. A man and woman, intent and hurrying 
too, she trig and comely, in handsome suit and costly 
furs, he with spats and top hat and cane, came abreast 
Lucy. At which she, always cold but to the few, did 
at once the most impulsive and most uncharacteristic 
act of her life; flinging herself, as it were, upon their 
evident and greater comprehension. 

“Oh, what?” she said to the woman. 

“Peace, peace; oh, haven’t you heard?” The speaker 
was crying behind her tight-drawn and modish veil, 
though her face was irradiated and shining; while that 
of the man twitched with the stress of his visible and 
great emotion. “The armistice is signed by Germany, 
and hostilities ceased to-day.” 

“Oh, the merciful God ” 

Lucy knew she said these words, though her stiff 
lips moving, made no sound. She became aware that 
she was staring at these two strangers; that they had 
seized and were wringing her hands; or had she out- 
stretched her hands to them? 


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The while the colored-girl bell-hops and pages 
poured out the club doorway into the street; and every 
window of the building was filled with faces of the 
members come up from the grill, or out from the 
dining room. 

The handsome woman who held Lucy’s hand was 
speaking. “We have three sons in France, the oldest 
twenty-six, who will come back to us now. Who have 
you?” 

A husband missing ; whether alive or dead she did 
not know; but she did not tell these strangers this. She 
broke from them with murmured acknowledgments 
and apology, and hurried away, following the crowd 
as it went westward along 20th Street. 


CHAPTER XXVI 


T Fourth Avenue Lucy stopped, hesitated, then 



crossed, making her way north toward 23d 


Street. People poured on to the sidewalk from 
every doorway of every building — men, women, boys, 
girls. Automobiles rushed by, honking as they went. 

Her feet padded as on snow, a carpet of the bits of 
paper that still rained above her, settled this quickly 
on the sidewalks. From afar came the sound of clamor 
and cheering voices. She laughed aloud. 

She hurried on, why or where she did not ask herself. 
She lifted her eyes. God in His heaven, it was a sight 
which clutched the heart. As far as eye could see, up 
and down Fourth Avenue, the air was white with paper 
scraps pouring from open windows. More and more 
automobiles rushed by, adding now to the honking of 
their horns, the back-firing of their engines, car after 
speeding car clattering like machine guns as they went. 
She quickened her pace almost to a run. 

At 2 1 st Street a man was locking the door of a shop 
from whose knob dangled a sign thus quickly made, 
which in big and rude black letters said, “Closed for 
Der Tag ” 

Along this cross street from the direction of Third 
Avenue came a tall, spare woman, plain of face and 
person, in her one hand an oil can and a new broom, 
and a bulging paper bag under her arm. Her eyes 


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289 


were exultant, and her face stern, and as she came she 
blew solemnly on a long, red, white and blue paper- 
horn. A strange angel trumpeter, but promptly Lucy 
thought of one. 

At 23d Street Lucy turned west. It was solid with 
humanity, these dazed and speechless as they stumbled 
along, or shrilly vocal, shouting, laughing, and weeping. 
Two short and stocky men emerging from the subway 
together suddenly stopped, removed and solemnly 
smashed each other’s derby hats, replaced the ruins on 
each respective head, and arm in arm, lost themselves 
in the melee. 

It came on Lucy, who now had crossed the street, 
that the mob about her at this point were would-be 
purchasers, clamoring for newspapers from the news- 
stand. To be sure, a newspaper! 

She found her purse and pushed into the confu- 
sion. Taking the paper thrust at her by the little 
woman vendor over the intervening heads of the 
crowd when her turn came, she made her way out of 
the press. 


EXTRA! 

HUNS SURRENDER. 

HOSTILITIES CEASED 
AT 2 P.M. TO-DAY 

She caught her breath as she read the headlines, and 
sobbed. 

And still, and yet still, the air above her rained its 
white messengers. And still the crowd about her grew, 
and the clamor. She edged her way to the curb. A 
level sea of heads filled 23d Street from sidewalk to 


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sidewalk, the street solid with people. Above this sea, 
the windows and the balconies of the Metropolitan 
Building spouted paper, with here and there a streamer 
of ticker-tape. Each window framed faces, and each 
balcony was crowded, boy and girl clerks by the 
hundreds gazing on the scene below. When a girl 
on a balcony who held a japanned cover of a type- 
writer in her hand like a gong, clanged on it with 
something metal, her companions on the balcony 
shrieked. 

Lucy on the curb, her eyes drawn now this way and 
now that, felt as though she gazed on some gigantic 
work of release from dire enchantment. A moment 
since, and each individual creature in all this multitude 
was bound to his task, eyes, hands, heart, feverish soul, 
captives beneath a spell, from which for one moment 
to desist were to bring down the curse. The necro- 
mancy brought about by war lifting, like captives from 
behind bars and prison doors, they poured forth, unre- 
strained, jubilant, giving way madly to all and any 
emotions. 

Through the ever-increasing numbers Lucy padded 
her way toward Madison Square, the paper-snow be- 
neath her feet in one spot ankle-deep. Scraps of paper! 
The phrase repeated itself again and again in her mind. 
Not violated treaties these, not mocking symbols of 
the diplomacy of the past and its futility, but shining 
witnesses, messengers of a promised new fashion in 
peace! God see to it that this time in history, those 
who made the promise keep their word! 

She caught a bit of paper in her gloved hand as it 
floated down, circling before her face. It was a frag- 
ment of newspaper, its edges torn at an angle. She 
flattened it and scanned it: 


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Cotton-Goods Contracts for the Army 
when the boche was dead 

fear a shortage of shipping next 
spring. 

Yesterday these words were vital in their import 
and prevailing, the date upon the bit of paper being 
November 5. 

Less time ago than yesterday, the universal state of 
mind was one of war! She lifted the tiny messenger 
to her lips and kissed it, then opened her bag, and put 
it carefully away. It seemed to her that it was sacred, 
a very precious thing. 

She had reached the intersection of 23d Street, 
Broadway, and Fifth Avenue. The air vibrated to a 
low, deep boom, repeated and again repeated. She 
judged it to be the guns on the ships in the North River. 
From somewhere came again the rapid ricochet of 
back-firing motors. And still the crowd grew. 

She never had loved her kind in the mass. The peo- 
ple, “the dear peepul,” as the great old editor of her 
home newspaper called them, were tolerable to her 
only as she considered them subjectively, not objec- 
tively. In their midst, elbowed, pushed and jostled, 
about her every element that enters into a crowd in 
New York City, she had only to make her way to 
Broadway, and so on uptown by surface car to her 
hotel, and be free of them. 

She did not. She turned and as best she could, 
crossed to that side of Fifth Avenue that bounds Madi- 
son Square. 

Who has not felt the terror, and also the exultation, 
that come with a crowd? Who has not quailed before 
the sense of its power? At the comprehension of its 
sweep and sway that nothing can resist? 


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The park on Lucy’s right, the sidewalk whereon she 
struggled to keep her footing, the street itself at this 
wide but congested point, were solid with the outpour- 
ing. A man with a swarthy skin and earrings was 
on one side of Lucy, two girls shrill and voluble were 
on the other. She was an atom, as were they, in a sea 
of atoms. For the crowd surged and flowed like the 
ocean. Its voice, gathering volume, was become tonal, 
deep, murmurous and booming, also like the ocean. It 
came on Lucy as she struggled to keep her feet, its 
breath about her, its shoulders crushing her, that any 
creature attempting to interfere with its present humor 
would be swept down and annihilated, trodden under 
without parley or hesitation. 

She found herself thinking of the French Revolu- 
tion; of the mob as it rushed on the Bastille; of the 
king and Marie Antoinette looking down on the howl- 
ing populace from the balcony of the Tuileries. She 
thought of recent Petrograd and the revolution and the 
days before Kerensky; of the passion that will arise 
sooner or later in oppressed peoples everywhere. And 
seeing that the spirit of this surging crowd about her 
now was one of resistless uplift and exaltation, she 
thought on the power of the idea , to sway peoples for 
good or for bad according to its nature. 

She thought of how blind and stupid are the rulers 
of the world, the politicians and the doddering states- 
men, from the days of the pharaohs and before, to 
the present moment; and suddenly she saw that her 
question put to herself an hour ago as she sat at her 
luncheon in the club, was answered : The peoples could 
speak y and were speaking, and their accent was unmis- 
takable! 

Peace! Peace! This was what they said; speaking 


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293 


from impassioned hearts, and out of depths of infinite 
desire. As with the tall and gaunt woman blowing her 
paper horn, it seemed to Lucy that her own soul arose 
at this moment, and trumpeted its exaltation. 

Peoples unexploited are nonmilitant? Peoples free 
from compulsion are pacifist, ugly as recent usage has 
made the word? Their slow-mounting intention 
throughout this war had been a growing if inarticulate 
determination to have peace? Not peace for this par- 
ticular present moment; but peace forever! 

A consuming loneliness here seized her; a craving 
for human contact that overwhelmed her. She only 
was alone, amid this joyful multitude. Here was a 
bevy of voluble young working girls, there a marching 
group of youths, chanting as they went; here a crowd 
of men, there a man and woman. She gazed about her 
desperately. These people were right; it was a mo- 
ment for human relations. She would go into the first 
Western Union office she came to, and send a wire to 
her mother-in-law and her little son; she would send 
one to Stephen’s uncle and aunt; one to the parents of 
Bennie; one to ’Genie. 

She wondered if demonstrations such as this about 
her, were taking place elsewhere around the world? 
In Paris? In London? In Rome? In Melbourne? 
In India? Were men singing, shouting, frankly weep- 
ing, as were these about her here in New York City, 
along the roads and on the battlefields of Europe? In 
France? In Italy? On the far fronts of Serbia? 
What was happening in Berlin? What had become 
of the Kaiser? Why in these recent official messages 
out of Germany was no mention made of him? 

She now was abreast the Altar of Liberty. It was 
surrounded with people packed closely, and a man on 


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the rostrum was speaking. His lips moved, and he 
gesticulated violently. It came to Lucy afterward that 
she was within a dozen feet of him and did not hear a 
word, so submerged was all other sound in the mur- 
murous volume of the whole. 

An airplane passed, dipping and lifting, careening 
and circling, its white wings flashing in the sunlight, 
joy mad with the rest of the world. In the jostling of 
a thousand shoulders, and the upturning of a thousand 
faces to behold it, Lucy was thrust against a gun car- 
riage supporting a gun, one of a pair that flanked the 
altar. Held here in an eddy while the crowd at large 
flowed by, her eyes followed the words on a placard 
hanging from the bronze barrel. It was a captured 
German 77-millimeter cannon. She caught her breath, 
and her gloved finger shudderingly touched the smooth 
surface. Cast in the breech below an Imperial crown 
and the monogram W.I. were the words Ultima Ratio 
Regnum. 

“ ‘The last argument of kings’ ?” A voice spoke 
across the barrel. 

Lucy looked up sharply, having inherited from her 
grandmother a theory that a woman’s self when de- 
cent, is her only needed protection; and the severity of 
her features gave way to eager recognition. 

“Eugene Lelewel!” 

His hair as ingenuously flaxen as a newly fledged 
duckling’s down, his blue eyes paradoxically keen, he 
was smiling as he looked, now at the gun, now at her. 
His soft hat was in his hand, and he wore excellent 
clothes. 

She touched his sleeve across the gun arraigningly. 
“What is the message you have for me from my hus- 


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band? Why have you let me wait since the night you 
saw me?” 

He lifted his brows and also his shoulders, then let 
them drop together. For all the naive quality of his 
absurd hair, this man was entirely sure of himself, 
carrying himself with a careless freedom, and smiling 
with the easy, the amused detachment of one satisfied 
with his position. 

When Lucy saw him last in Kentucky, on a Sunday 
afternoon at Ashe, he was no less sure of his opinions, 
his jaw was no less set. But the air of him then was 
passive, as with one prepared to wait; whereas the 
every aspect of him now bespoke elation. 

He answered smilingly. “My message for you got 
through to Lyda, then? I didn’t know. I reckoned 
on a possible one in half a dozen letters I might send, 
getting past the censor.” 

She stared, as light broke upon her. “The voice 
speaking to me both times over the telephone was your 
little Andrey? No, I didn’t know. I had not thought 
of your wife and boy as being all this while in Louis- 
ville, though I don’t know why.” 

It was his turn to look his surprise. “Lyda had the 
boy speak to you? Wouldn’t do it herself?” 

He laughed. “It’s like her. How she hated you, 
for yourself which she resented, and for that for which 
you stand.” 

He spoke reminiscently, looking away into the crowd. 
“I married Lyda when she was eighteen. She is of 
Russian parentage and birth, but raised in America. 
My mistake. She had breathed the air of your 
America, which is bad for all women. She is like the 
rest of you American women, she demands all of life 


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in return for nothing, an egotist, self-absorbed and 
resentful. Out of her public school education, a glori- 
ous testifying this, she knows just two things; she 
doesn’t want to be a workingman’s wife, and she does 
want to be, and to have, what you more privileged 
women are, and have.” 

He talked to keep away from her question; Lucy 
saw this. “What is it you have to tell me?” 

“You have it; it reached you in my messages.” 

“Is my husband alive?” 

“He was eighteen months ago, when I saw and 
talked with him.” 

He turned at this, because of the quick exhaling 
of her breath, and looked at her as she stood on her 
side of the captured 77-millimeter gun, her two hands 
on the barrel, as if to support herself. She would not 
be whiter of brow, of cheeks, of lips, had a splinter 
from a shell projected from the smooth bore of the 
machine driven through her heart. 

He remembered this Mrs. Stephen Janvier, then 
Miss Wing, as interesting, and capable of piquing 
the mind with curiosity concerning her. He long had 
told himself that to the foreigner when he is informed 
at all, the young American girl is as crudely uninformed 
as she is voluble and egotistical. He had found this 
girl sensible, with a cool intelligence, not one to be 
taken in, but rather to appraise for herself, and value. 

As for Lucy as she leaned there, braced against the 
German cannon, it was joy that was killing her; the 
sudden certainty that the messages were authentic; were 
authorized; that Stephen subsequent to his officially 
reported disappearance, was alive. In the moment’s 
too sudden relief, she seemed to learn what it would 
mean to die. 


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“I think,” she spoke slowly, and with visible effort, 
“if you’ll get me through the crowd, I’ll ask you to 
take a cab with me to my hotel. We can better talk 
of these things there.” 

He looked at her with concern; then a shrug fol- 
lowed. “I’ll get you to Fourth Avenue and a surface 
car, probably the best we can do. I doubt if there’s 
a taxicab to be had at this minute in all New York. 
Can you see the ladies on the platform behind the 
present speaker? I’m their immediate property, you 
see; and while it’s palpably futile to continue their pro- 
gram, I’m due to speak for them in about five minutes. 

I can, and will, join you at your hotel within an hour.” 

She remembered at this, the Liberty Loan now an 
accomplished fact, the drive for the United War Work 
was begun ! But what had Eugene Lelewel to do with 
it? Four years ago he was the avowed enemy of 
society as at present organized. She looked at the 
ladies designated. Two were middle-aged, alertly dis- 
traught as far as any attention to their present speaker 
went; eyes roving; the typical committee women, in 
mind putting over the date next ahead; the third was 
Peggy Tewksbury! 

Eugene had come around from his side of the gun, 
and here led the way, not forward along the sidewalk, 
but out to the curb. Lucy followed. 

Two great streams moved along the asphalt, one up- 
town and one down, opposing rivers of humanity. Not 
a vehicle was to be seen. From the direction of Broad- 
way came the crashing of a band, the first to be heard. 

He stepped from the curb, and she followed, seeing 
that his purpose was to join with the uptown stream, 
and make his way with her to a cross street. 

A group of sailor boys in blue, and youthful soldiers 


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in khaki, swept by, part of the on-surging stream, a 
sailor boy at their head with a broom for a baton, the 
others in his train gloriously busy with tin flutes and 
toy drums. An olive-skinned boy bumped into Lucy 
as he passed her, holding aloft a banner made of heavy 
paper and lettered boldly, “Sholem — Peace.” 

Following the Jewish lad, and like him, passing 
Lucy, came a phalanx of middle-aged Negro women, 
bareheaded, with sweeping skirts and mighty strides, 
forming a hollow square about a service flag dotted 
with stars, a star of gold in the margin. Of these 
women one was singing as she passed Lucy, an older 
person with grizzled hair, her eyes stern and her head 
up, a band of black upon her sleeve. The words as 
she passed, came back to Lucy: 

“Praise Him all creatures he-e-re be-e-lo-ow!” 

Lucy, in the wake of Eugene, glanced toward the 
park. Above the heads, old Farragut in enduring 
bronze, on his pedestal, clear-eyed and indomitable, far- 
gazed over the sea of humanity, his eyes those of the 
master of his craft, who sees port ahead. 

Stable and fixed; a rock in a beating, surging sea; 
what did old Farragut see? Was it a federation of 
nations to be tried out, acceptable and established? 
A world federation as enduring as the federation of 
States that he fought grimly and so well to preserve? 

Farragut! Whose blockade of the Mississippi 
River preceded the siege by water and by land of 
Vicksburg; the while in that beleagured and bombarded 
city, a southern woman, gently and luxuriously reared, 
gave premature birth to a daughter; this daughter, her- 
self to-day the mother of an officer-son in khaki, the 
wife of Mr. Stephen Janvier, the elder. 

Unspeakably and unpardonably cruel, the story hith- 


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erto seemed to Lucy in the telling; the terrified young 
mother in her travail; the impoverished household; 
the near-by enemy, one in blood and tradition. To-day 
amid these rejoicing throngs in the streets of New 
York, the lesser evil seemed forever swallowed in the 
greater good! Old Farragut’s task was appointed 
him: The Union must and shall he preserved! The 
Union was preserved! To-day he gazed above the 
heads of the turbulent people, the seer who sees on the 
horizon the rays of a coming day’s greater federation! 

Eugene and Lucy came to their cross street, and 
made their way toward Fourth Avenue. He seemed 
infinitely diverted by what he saw about him. 

“Peace!” His nose with its rippling contour, 
twitched with his silent laughter. “Is it possible,” he 
said to her, “that these people with the history of 
Europe open to them, really believe in it? Granted the 
armistice, and granted a peace conference supposed 
to represent them. What then? What will the out- 
come of a European peace always be? What has it 
always been, as delegated to the diplomats and rulers? 
Compromise; expediency; sacrifice of principles; re- 
sulting in the intensifying of old, and the creating of 
new bitternesses.” 

He saw a passing empty taxicab after all, and sig- 
naled it, putting Lucy in it, himself talking the while. 

“The past generations of peoples have bowed their 
heads, and submitted to these things. The present peo- 
ples of the world are in a humor to rise and, resistless, 
sweep aside diplomacy and compromise, seeing in these 
evils the prolific breeders of all their past and present 
troubles.” 


CHAPTER XXVII 


ELEWEL kept his word, and was shown up to 



Lucy’s sitting room something before four 


J — * o’clock. Ellen sat just within the open door of 
the adjoining bedroom, stoically mending some freshly- 
delivered laundry. Fifty-odd years’ training in the 
school of service to Mrs. Wing, that arch-autocrat- 
democrat, had not divorced her from her private way 
of thinking. Her scorn of the visitor just arrived was 
unconcealed. 

Lucy motioned him to a chair, and herself sat on a 
sofa from where she saw her companion’s face with 
the light from the window upon it. If, as she felt an 
hour since, he was keeping something from her, she 
would make sure of this fact. She wasted no time in 
preliminaries. 

“The last message to me also is true, then? Some 
prisoners escaped, or meaning to escape out of Ger- 
many, have some word from my husband for me?” 

“One of these men, separated from the others before 
they got to Ghent, eventually reached Stockholm where 
I met him, and told me so.” 

“When?” 

“Six weeks ago.” 

“We’ll come back to this. Tell me, when and where 
it was you saw Stephen?” 

“At the German prison camp at Dulmen. Later, I 
learn, he was sent to Termonde. I was a prisoner at 


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Dulmen when he came there. We were together four 
weeks.” 

“Came from where?” 

“His first and temporary prison camp. He described 
it as an old cavalry stable with moldy straw on a 
cement floor for beds. I suppose the trouble really 
began there.” 

“What trouble ?” 

“Infection in his wounds.” 

“What wounds?” 

He looked at her. He had no objection to the 
fashion of her questions which came curt and sharp. 
He was thinking that she was paler, under scrutiny, 
than he found her an hour ago. These months past 
had worked havoc with her bloom and her youth. 

“You’re good for all this?” 

She nodded. “The unkind thing is not to tell me.” 

Nevertheless he was nervous, and as she was aware, 
avoided her eyes. She pushed a tray of cigarettes and 
matches toward him, but he shook his head, produced 
paper and tobacco, and rolled his own. Andrey, the 
son, had the same long, oddly wise face, the same 
downy-white hair; in the child’s case, however, the 
expression was grave, not keen, and the hair was dull. 
Stephen once said Eugene was a coming man, or a 
force perverted. 

He lighted his cigarette, and looking ahead of him 
through half-closed eyes, resumed: “As I remember 
the story as he told it to me, on the day in question 
Lieut. Janvier’s machine brought up the rear of the 
formation of the patrol. His especial job was to 
guard the tail of the flight. His plane was hit by a 
Fokker type of Hun plane at a height of 3,000 feet. 
He believed death inevitable, and switched off his 


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motor to prevent being burned in the plane. He 
dropped, and when his plane crashed to the ground 
inside the enemy lines, he crawled out alive, with a 
shoulder broken in three places, a smashed ankle, and 
many bruises. Temporary medical attention was given 
him, he told me, and he was started back toward a 
hospital prison camp. In this way he came to us at 
Dulmen.” 

He stopped. “I don’t want to seem unwilling, but 
hadn’t I better defer this?” 

She shook her head. If she could have spoken, she 
would have said to give her a moment’s time and she 
would be herself. With his words there had followed 
for her an interval of anguish, the sort of suffering 
which tightens the heart, and produces a feeling of 
physical helplessness. A shivering ran over her, a 
loneliness akin to nostalgia seized her. She felt if she 
could not reach Stephen, she would die; to ease and 
cherish him; to cradle him against her bosom; to stay 
and respite him; pouring out her love and her yearning 
in passionate ministration. 

But immediately she was herself again, outwardly 
at least, curt, controlled and definite. Again she pushed 
the tray of tobacco and matches to him. “Tell me 
about this camp. This Dulmen. Why were you there? 
I thought you went back to Russia?” 

“I was a Russian prisoner. Dulmen originally was 
an all-Russian prison camp. Later every nationality 
then represented in the allies was there, English, Rus- 
sian, French, Belgian, Colonial. Each nationality was 
fenced off behind its three lines of wire; the first line 
of the entanglement with all its points on; the second 
of plain wire; the third line of square mesh, and said 
to be electrified. The sentries were between the first 


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and second wires, and there were sentry boxes at inter- 
vals outside the third wire.” 

He seemed to talk to no seen end; if he really was 
avoiding the issue, she would bring him to it in time. 

“Inside these inclosures were our barracks; these 
were buildings of unpainted wood, like one-story barns, 
each housing from seventy-five to one hundred pris- 
oners. For sleeping there were three rows of shelves 
around the walls, bunked off and filled with straw. 
Each barrack had its galley for cooking. There were 
tubs for soup, and tubs for what was called coffee. 
Each man dipped his portion, being provided with a 
plate, cup, and spoon. A general office and administra- 
tion building stood in the center of the camp. Three 
machine guns were mounted on the top of this build- 
ing, facing in different directions, three sentries on 
guard day and night.” 

He laughed, the really mirthful laugh that was char- 
acteristic. “It’s the old story of civilization repeated, 
the incredibly many held by the few. Tens of hundreds 
herded Samsons were there. All my life I have seen 
a picture in my mind: The blinded peoples, bound 
with fetters of brass, pausing as they grind in the 
prison house, and lifting their heads as at last they 
sense their power ! What matter who of us are borne 
down in the fall of the temple, so the Philistines die? 
So long as the people bow themselves with all their 
might and the house fall upon the lords of the world? 
Then shall we of them who are left, set about building 
up the new structure. Shall I tell you about the prison 
bread?” 

She nodded. She again was fighting that anguish 
returned upon her, and could not speak. 

“A so-called portion was a slice about five inches 


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in diameter and one inch thick. It was glossy, wet 
and dark, the bottom crust resembling gelatin, and it 
smelt like sour earth. Rations came through to many 
of the French and English prisoners, and they were 
generous with their less fortunate companions. I have 
come on worse food in my time, however, where we 
of the exploited masses were just as helpless. I take 
it you’ve never been in the fo’castle of a merchant 
marine? Almost any country. No?” 

Again he laughed. “Ever looked into conditions in 
a mining town, company housing, and stores?” 

He rolled another cigarette. “Shall I tell you of 
the prison garb? Yes? Though for the most we 
were nondescript, anything obtainable sufficing. At 
Dulmen at the start, I wore long pants, jet-black in 
color, of a cotton material. Down the side of each 
leg ran a yellow band, inserted in such fashion that if 
ripped and removed, a gap was left and the garment 
fell apart. The left sleeve of the black blouse, cut 
military fashion, had a similar inserted band of yellow, 
two inches wide. The blouse buttoned down the front, 
and had no pockets. With this I also wore a 
little round hat like a bell-hop’s, a little higher perhaps, 
through which ran a yellow band woven in, in similar 
fashion.” 

She held herself in hand with superhuman deter- 
mination. “Tell me how you and my husband met at 
Dulmen?” 

“It’s a bit of a story. So far as I know, Lieut. Jan- 
vier was our first American prisoner, though others 
came later. Though serving with the French, he was 
placed in the English camp. We’ll have to go back a 
bit in my story. After the first big Russian defeat 
and rout by Hindenburg, the German prison camps 


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were crowded with Russian prisoners, numbered by the 
hundreds of thousands. Cholera broke out among 
these prisoners. The German medical staff failed to 
stem it, and Russia was asked by the Prussian govern- 
ment in the name of humanity, though in reality to pro- 
tect Germany, to send her own medical men, promising 
they would be returned when the scourge was checked. 

“These men came, the most of them volunteers for 
the service. They controlled the cholera, but Ger- 
many did not return them. She held them for use 
in her prison camps generally, among these the camp 
at Dulmen. I, a prisoner at Dulmen in the hospital 
wards, in time became an orderly, and was permitted 
to go about with Pavel Sergueyevna, Dr. Sergueyevna 
from Petrograd, because he grew used to me, and 
found me handy. A surgeon in the various camps at 
Dulmen, he was rough, severe, but effectual. He reset 
Lieut. Janvier’s fractures, after ten days’ neglect along 
the way, reduced his fever, and at the time pulled him 
through. I was slavey to Pavel Sergueyevna as I said, 
made the daily rounds with him, and so came in contact 
with the patients in the several hospital camps. You 
have the story.” 

Lucy knew that she for her needs did not have the 
story. She knew that this man, whom she at first meet- 
ing four years and more ago, had regarded inquisi- 
tively and condescendingly, could more nearly give her 
what she wanted to know than any other creature in the 
world at this instant. She longed for the courage to 
cry aloud her question, to let this panting need show 
itself if must be, bare and naked. She wanted to say 
to Eugene, “Did my husband speak of me? Has he 
need of me? Have you no pledge for me that he 
thinks of me?” 


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But because the human soul is decent in its reti- 
cences, she spoke quietly, with every show of calmness. 
“Tell me of Stephen? Tell me how he looked? And 
how he really seemed to you?” 

“Anything I say is many months old, Mrs. Janvier. 
Four weeks after he came I was removed to another 
camp. When I left he looked fairly fit for a man 
coming through an infected wound. One recollection 
I have is finding him propped up on a bench, his plas- 
tered leg outstretched before him, trying to see what 
he could stir up. He had a mouth organ he had bor- 
rowed, and with his one good hand and arm was 
teaching ragtime to an Oxford boy on crutches who had 
borrowed another, while the rest of the hospital ward 
howled for mercy.” 

Ellen in the next room looked up. When the mo- 
ment came that she judged fit, she would speak, and 
send this one-time brewery hand about his business. 
Twice her watchful eyes had seen Lucy’s hand secretly 
press her heart. 

Lucy was speaking. “How often during these four 
weeks did you see Lieut. Janvier? And when you saw 
him, about what did you and he talk?” 

“I saw him always once a day. As he grew better, 
we talked of old things and new, stubborn each, as of 
old. He spoke of you, telling me of his marriage, and 
of the son he had not yet seen. We agreed that in the 
event either got out of Germany, that one would get 
word to the wife and the family of the other. I labored 
under the handicap of returning to Russia when I did 
get away. But my endeavors were sincere.” 

“I thought every prisoner in Germany has the right 
to get his name and address through to the appointed 
channels for relief and notification?” 


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“In general, yes; since no prisoner in a German 
prison is adequately fed except when food is supplied 
him from allied sources. In the most of the camps 
that I saw, the trouble seemed not so much the system, 
but the commandant in charge. He may be as decent 
as a jailer may be, or he may be as brutal as he pleases. 
It’s a question of arbitrary power, and the same criti- 
cism applies to any military system anywhere, in every 
branch of its service. At this particular moment at 
Dulmen things were bad, especially for the one Ameri- 
can prisoner.” 

“Why for the American?” 

“It’s a story again. Dulmen and Louisville, Ken- 
tucky, would seem a ways apart; they proved surpris- 
ingly knit together.” 

He looked up with a flash of a smile. “Let me tell 
you a little story while the main story waits. When 
the Russian from my part of Russia wants to convey 
an idea of the interdependence of man on his fellow 
creatures, he tells the story of Ivan Ivanich at his great 
desk, setting down wisdom in a mighty book that no 
one ever opened. 

“ ‘Ekaterina Ivanova,’ Ivan called to his wife at her 
duties, ‘is it you who shakes the floor?’ 

“ ‘Not me, my master; it is Lin Tew the weaver, who 
walks heavily at his task in China.’ 

“ ‘Ekaterina Ivanova, is our window unlatched that 
the cold comes in?’ 

“ ‘Not our window, my husband; Jan of Iceland has 
forgotten to drop the reindeer skin behind him as he 
went out his door.’ 

“ ‘Ekaterina Ivanovna, do I hear you sob?’ 

41 ‘Not me, Ivan Ivanich; it is the mother whose child 
was swept away in the flooded Ganges.’ ” 


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Lucy looked at Eugene who still smiled. “You 
mean just what?” 

“I mean this. The first American prisoner in a camp 
like Dulmen did not escape general notoriety. Ger- 
many was counting on the neutrality of the United 
States. This American prisoner was a marked man.” 

Eugene drew breath. “In the eyes of the command- 
ant of the Dulmen prison camp, Louisville, Kentucky, 
for entirely another reason stood for affront, for griev- 
ance. This commandant’s sister, a widow in East Prus- 
sia, had a daughter married out of her junker class. 
This daughter’s husband, whose name was Weimar, 
was a lieutenant in a highly desirable regiment how- 
ever; and the means by which he had arrived there, and 
by which he maintained his position there, came from 
Louisville, Kentucky.” 

Eugene flashed a quick smile at Lucy. “You catch 
the connection? This aid came from old Weimar out 
of his brewery-made millions; for the gratification to 
himself, and his sister living in Louisville also, he 
sponsored his nephew, the son of a brother left behind 
him in the fatherland.” 

Again Eugene smiled. “I myself had these things 
from Pavel Sergueyevna, who of an evening often sat 
smoking with the commandant. Pavel Sergueyevna 
had his rough humor. That I should have lived in 
Louisville, Kentucky, a foreman in the brewery of old 
Weimar; and that the first and only American pris- 
oner in the Dulmen camp should be from Louisville, 
Kentucky, and have served as a legal adviser to old 
Weimar, tickled him supremely. 

“For Pavel Sergueyevna regarded the heavily-built 
and overfed elderly commandant as a fool and a bore, 


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a present cross of necessity to be borne with. And 
this commandant was sore in his peace of mind, and 
apprehensive of an appeal to his pocket. The Ameri- 
can source of supply for his Junker sister’s lieutenant- 
son-in-law, was dammed; and nothing more forthcom- 
ing. The four sons and the two daughters of old 
Weimar apparently felt no impulse to support the 
fatherland. At the start of the war, and before the 
United States came in, the oldest son wrote that they 
had carried their father with them in their stand, and 
revenues to the lieutenant-nephew came no more. Your 
husband, I am sure, in himself gave no offense. That 
his letters suffered vicariously as a vent to spleen, I feel 
fairly sure.” 

The nostrils of the girl quivered. He saw that she 
tried, and could not speak. He off-flung a further word 
lightly. “It helps considerably among the run of pris- 
oners, to find that men good as you and better, are 
subject to this sort of thing. I should say it keeps up 
the morale tremendously.” 

She felt that she could if ever she had to, forgive 
the man much because of this speech. She looked at 
him gratefully. “Tell me how he was when you left 
him; how he seemed; what he was doing when you saw 
him last?” 

“Convalescing; praying God to send him a razor, 
before he quite grew a Barbarossa’s beard. He was 
moving around cautiously on a crutch, one foot and 
ankle, and a shoulder, still in plaster; and was heckling 
a bank-clerk Tommy Atkins, shortly before come up 
for a commission and still heady with the ascent. 
Coaxing him in his eye bandage to desist from twitting 
Sandy Macpherson of Glasgow who sported a sling, 


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for the bur-r-r upon his tongue; and himself stand up 
like a Briton and say, High heaven-aspiring hoary- 
headed Himalayas ” 

Ellen laid down her mending and came in. Lucy had 
turned about as she sat, and with her face against the 
stiff pillow roll, was sobbing quietly. It was as if 
Stephen were given back to her in all his honesty and 
sane humor; his optimism; his healthy and infectious 
vitality. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


W ARRINGTON had telephoned during the 
afternoon and asked Lucy to dine with him 
in celebration of the great news. When he 
was announced at seven, Ellen asked him to come to 
Mrs. Janvier’s parlor. 

He arrived speedily, a short, heavy figure swinging 
on a crutch which thrust one shoulder high. His eyes 
swept the room for Lucy promptly. 

She was standing at a window that looked down on 
the avenue, and turned as he came in. 

Oh, the once young, glowing, pretty love of his life! 
He was across the room in two great swings of his 
body and beside her. She was crying, too grief- 
absorbed to care, or perhaps to know; for the tears 
lay wet and unregarded on her cheeks. 

He loved her when in the eyes of the world, for 
him to love this woman was a sin. Doubtless human 
creatures should not be like this, but they are. 

He looked her up and down. “I see you’re not 
ready to go with me? Where’s your hat? What’s the 
idea? You’re not up to it? You know the news is 
fake, of course?” 

She nodded. “Eugene Lelewel told me. He left 
half an hour ago.” 

The astounded look in Warrington’s close-set, small 
blue eyes, was lively with amazement. “What in the 


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name of high heaven, Lucy, do you know of Eugene 
Lelewel?” 

“Why do you speak in that tone? I pointed him 
out to you at the Metropolitan Opera House the eve- 
ning I got here to New York, the workingman I said 
was from Louisville ; and I told you later the story of 
my knowing him.” 

“Certainly you may have pointed to some one, and 
certainly you told me of your workingman acquaint- 
ance; but you did not mention any name.” 

He put out his hand and detached her fingers that 
grasped the curtain. “Come to the sofa, and sit down 
beside me.” 

She obeyed him as she always did, without demur or 
question, submitting herself to him with a dependence 
that oftentimes stirred him to the soul. How poign- 
antly lovely to him she was; the thin fine nose; the 
tired mouth; the wearily relaxed body. His face that 
in its every big and homely feature was the replica 
of his great-aunt, Mrs. Tewksbury, bent a look upon 
her with more than its usual modicum of concern. She 
had a way of raising her eyes to his when she listened, 
and also when she asked a question. He could sit and 
contemplate her forever. 

“This seems a strange and sinister association for 
you, my dear. Eugene Lelewel, better known as Anton 
Prill, radical and propagandist, is one of the best known 
of the Internationales. I’ve been coming on articles 
of his in this foreign review, and that, for ten years. 
I’ve heard it said that he writes with facility in half a 
dozen languages. He’s only just back in this country 
from Russia, and I hear speaks openly of the months 
of work he put in in the prison camps in Germany, 


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converting or corrupting, as you prefer to call it, Rus- 
sian prisoners over to Bolshevism, through German 
connivance, and with German approval. And inciden- 
tally, so I hear he claims, corrupting the German sol- 
dier. The A. P. L. — American Protective League — 
have his name on their list, and the Department of 
Justice ought to have it, if it hasn’t. That men such as 
he, making no secret of their activities, get in and out 
of this country as they are doing, makes the loyal 
American sit up and nurse his suspicions anxiously; 
the newspaper man with his superior opportunities for 
knowing, a little more anxiously than most. Now tell 
me what you know through Eugene Lelewel-Prill, you 
astounding young person!” 

He listened to her story, as given to her by Eugene 
an hour ago. He listened, as always, well. It was said 
of him in his reportorial days, that whatever the case 
he had to cover he never took a note, being shy a hand 
on account of the crutch; and never came back to his 
office with a point uncovered. 

At the close of her story she remembered a for- 
gotten incident. “When I came on him to-day in Madi- 
son Square, he was waiting his turn, a speaker for your 
cousin, Peggy Tewksbury, and her U. W. W. commit- 
tee. 

“Peggy and Anton Prill-Lelewel ! In the name of 
Big Business and Capital, written with capital letters, 
and Red-Handed Anarchy spelled with the same!” 

With his lips pursed he considered her. Then as 
suddenly he laughed. It was well in any event to carry 
her thoughts with him, away from their present an- 
guished centering. A moment since as she talked, he 
had put out a hand, immeasurably strong hands his 


3H 


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were, bony, blunt-fingered and hairy, and touched hers 
that tightly clasped lay in her lap. As he had divined, 
hers were icy-cold and quivering. 

He smiled now as he talked. “Myself, I like cool- 
headedness, and value a certain sort of calculation. 
I’m fond of Peggy. The outcome of several genera- 
tions of begetters and also conservers of big wealth, 
she for so young a person is the epitome of calm com- 
mon sense. A story this briskly able young person told 
me a few evenings since, comes back to me in the light 
of your sequel. 

“ ‘I’m pledged,’ Peggy told me, ‘to furnish so many 
speakers for this U. W. W. campaign, for so many 
days. I’d heard that the propounders of the doubtful 
creeds can talk all around the orthodox; so I went the 
other night to an advertised open forum at a certain 
center of radicalism, and frankly, their speakers do. I 
rounded up several of ’em in the rear of the hall as they 
were leaving, told ’em who I was, and put my proposi- 
tion to ’em. “I’m asking for volunteers,” I told ’em; 
“you to talk the dollars out the pockets of a well-nigh 
weary public, by dwelling on the horrors of war, and 
I to be present, to see you delete the creeds. At this 
moment of conservation of all resources, I’m sure you’ll 
agree?” And agree they did, two of ’em, men, as 
highly amused as I could wish ’em, at the entire pleas- 
antry of the affair.’ ” 

****** 

An hour later Warrington returned with Lucy along 
the sidewalk from the near-by chosen restaurant, and 
dinner. She looked at the shifting, surging flow of 
people; he looked at her, the white keen light from 
the street’s brilliancy on her face. She talked. 

“The crowds here on the streets are right, War- 


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3*5 


rington; they know the news of an armistice is only 
premature. Of course, like you, I see that much of 
to-night’s excess is license, and would be riot if it quite 
dared. But, Warrington, I saw the best in human 
nature to-day. Earlier to-day I experienced the real 
thing. Grandmother made mock of the people. Dem- 
ocrat in theory, she had very little faith in the popular 
wisdom. To-day I disagreed with her! To-day I saw 
the people swayed by a constructive idea; an idea of a 
new peace, which they believe is to be for the good of 
society. It reversed the mob idea for me, a something 
which overthrows and destroys. Will they be stable, 
and remember what they saw in vision to-day? Can 
they be trusted to see to-morrow, what they grasped 
to-day ?” 

They turned the corner, the entrance to Lucy’s hotel 
almost at hand; about them the flag-hung fagades, the 
glittering shop windows, and the crowds that this day 
and evening, no man sought to control. A vast circle 
of people, visibly edified, blocked Fifth Avenue at this 
point from curb to curb, gathered about some central 
attraction. Lucy stopped short. 

“Warrington, be good to me. I must see what this 
is about. No creature to-day has reacted to this mo- 
ment as I have. I love these people !” 

He scowled fearsomely, and with amusement, as he 
regarded her. 

“Go to it, young ’un. Subdue yourself to the dye 
you now desire to work in. I’ll follow you if I can.” 

He did more; he made a way for her. No vehicles 
as yet had found their way back to the avenue, and the 
crowd before them was dense. It broke however; as 
was said before, a crowd always broke for Warrington 
with his crutch, and his quick, penetrating look about 


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him as he proceeded. Through the lane that opened, 
the two made their way to the front line. 

The space within the encircling crowd was clear; the 
asphalt smooth and gleaming in the arc light. Over- 
head banners billowed, snapped and floated. The 
eyes of the craning circle were upon two figures. The 
one was a tiny, oh, so wee and puckered-cheeked old, 
old woman, in short skirts and apron, a shawl pinned 
about her head, one gray lock astray and bobbing; she 
a-smile, her bright black eyes wandering, as she ground 
away at a diminutive hand organ. 

Malbrough, the prince of commanders, 

Has gone to the war in Flanders, 

growled Warrington, deep in his throat, supplying 
the words to her strains. 

The other figure was a dancing sailor; a visibly 
foreign, red-headed sailor, with a nose that at some 
time in his past was bashed in; not a person who ever 
would be hung for his prepossessing looks, but unre- 
strained and abandoned, a supple-jack, jubilant-mad, 
one took it, with the rest of the world. 

His arms folded high on his dark blue blouse, an 
oh-boy-watch-me-if-you-will invitation on his face, past- 
telling infectious, he hornpiped to the grinding of Mal- 
brough by the little old woman, after some fashion 
of his own. 

Footing it forward and back; plunging to the right, 
and to the left, his head ducked now to this side, now 
to that as he lunged; stamping, jigging, rocking, right 
foot to the fore, now the left; leaping, twirling, utter- 
ing small quick staccato cries ; footing it as human foot 
never danced more madly since faun and human crea- 
ture within one body dwelt together. At moments in- 


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3*7 


deed the featness transcended itself, and at such exhi- 
bitions of surpassing dexterity, the crowd howled its 
glee. 

“Warrington I” 

It was Lucy who spoke sharply, and with abruptness. 

For the sailor — the objective center of these thou- 
sand pairs of eyes — suddenly unfolded his arms, and 
without ceasing to dance, his feet indeed slapping and 
stamping on the asphalt with even greater fury, fum- 
bled for a second in his blouse. Jerking forth an 
object, he shook it free, and tossed it unfurled high 
in the air above his head. As the thousand pairs of 
eyes that followed the parabola described by this ob- 
ject before its descent, grasped not only that it was a 
flag, but that the flag was red, the dance ended with 
abruptness, and the sailor plunged into the crowd, his 
head lunged forward, and disappeared. 

* * * * * * 

Warrington made his way onward from Lucy’s hotel, 
speculating on the chance by and by of seeing a cab 
that would return him to his newspaper office. Indi- 
viduals in the crowds had dug up cowbells, rattles, 
horns, and other noise-producers associated with elec- 
tion night and New Year’s Eve, and the din as these 
passed arose to heaven. Men in uniform, and boys in 
sailor blue, were set upon by giggling, shrieking girls, 
and kissed and hugged, as they made their embar- 
rassed ways through the throngs. Curbstone peddlers 
thrust flags singly, and in bunches, into the faces of 
the passers-by. It was no longer the heartfelt and 
profound unloosing of the emotions that the afternoon 
had witnessed. 

“The lid went off,” Warrington told himself, “and 
it’s still climbing. The world from east to west, and 


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3i8 


from pole to pole, shouted with one voice to-day, it 
seems, when like day to the sun-worshipers of Inca 
awaiting on their knees, peace appeared/’ 

His way took him past his quarters, that were not 
far from his newspaper office. He loved his rooms. 
Lucy had come to him here more than once with Mrs. 
Wing, for tea, and also to dine. 

He thought of her now. He was aware as to how 
he appeared to her. She thought of him, sweetly and 
happily, as one of those who early know and find what 
they want. He seemed to her one of the to-be-envied 
persons. She reckoned him as stable and content, find- 
ing his needs in his work, and his profession. 


CHAPTER XXIX 


T HE day before Warrington left New York for 
Paris, Lucy returned to Ashe. Eugene had 
dropped from sight. Warrington, if any, had 
ways by which to reach him in New York City if he 
meant to be reached. From the day he and Lucy met 
in the crowd in Madison Square, she neither saw nor 
heard from him. Events following the true armistice, 
and preceding Warrington’s going, had moved with 
incredible swiftness; each day with its news brought 
Lucy its own peculiar nature of suspense, and therefore 
suffering. The newspapers gave specific statements : 

American prisoners released by the 
Germans are making their way singly 
and in pairs across the line at various 
points. The American Army has es- 
tablished stations at various points along 
the American sector of occupation where 
prisoners can be received and cared for 
as they arrive. 


Ellen Jackson was the factor at the last, that hurried 
their return. The winter preceding the draft, and the 
call of Julius Buck, her nephew, to the service, he 
married pretty Sally Dick, the daughter of the car- 
penter. Their child now was eighteen months old, and 
Ellen after her own undemonstrative fashion, had 
given her heart to it. Word came to her in New York 
that Sally was ill of the prevailing influenza. Julius 
319 


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was overseas, and the father of the motherless Sally, 
with whom she lived, was an elderly man. Lucy hast- 
ened their return at Ellen’s request, by two days. 

Met at the station by Helen and little Stephen, Lucy 
fell upon the neck of her mother-in-law, kissing her 
passionately. They walked home in the cheering sun- 
shine of the frosty day, Lucy holding her son by his 
clinging hand. 

“We will hope, we will hope,” she told Helen gayly, 
“until there is no need longer to hope.” 

’Genie was spending the day at the parsonage, and 
in the afternoon came over to welcome Lucy. She 
brought forth to view a letter with a little jerk. 

“Don’t you just naturally love our post office service? 
Hasn’t it done all it superhumanly can to soften the 
asperities of war? Bennie was killed in September. 
Yesterday brought me a letter from him written to me 
in August. Oh, my God! Lucy! Bennie’s dead and 
in his grave ! And yet he’s here ! Here !” She smote 
the envelope in her hand fiercely. 

“He’s here with all his drollness, his absurdity. He 
says that he, the day before, was walking down the 
Champs Elysees, a buck on leave, when whom did he 
meet but William McKinley Coffin from right here at 
home, a twirling swagger stick in his hand ! I’ll read 
it to you, as Bennie tells it: 

Said I to him, “Oh, boy, but aren’t you wishing you were 
home this day, son ?” 

But William wouldn’t have it. He said that he in his off 
hours was soft-shoe-and-clog dancing for the A. E. F. It was 
evident that he felt he was appreciated. I asked him a second 
question : 

“Oh, you Black Death, what do you know of Julius Buck?” 


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3 “ 1 


His answer implied that Julius likewise was where he would 
be. Said William: 

“Off hours, he’s the banjo-king of jazz-band players, in every 
sort of show a hut pulls off. At other times he’s one of five 
kettledrummers, 369th Regiment, Lieut. James Europe, Band- 
master, yes, sir!” 

* He * * * * 

The next day pretty Sally died. Ellen and Jerry 
brought the child home with them for the time being, 
where installed in Jerry’s cottage on the back of the 
place, the two with the aid of a half-grown Negro girl, 
looked after it. A likely little fellow, he was named 
for Julius; a crowing cafe-au-lait baby, bright-eyed and 
irresistible, that aroused smiles and good humor in 
the beholder. It resulted in his spending all his waking 
hours under Lucy’s roof. 

Sfc * * * 

There were other happenings here at home to catch 
and hold the thoughts of Lucy. Emily Gwynne, as it 
were overnight, became Mrs. Tecumseh Craig. The 
Colonel was eighty on his recently passed birthday. 

McHenry Stuart, perhaps by virtue of his service 
overseas, found Betty Craig more amenable to his suit 
on his return, and married her before she could change 
her mind. Betty was the cousin of Colonel Tecumseh, 
as she was of Helen Janvier and Stephen. 

It revived old stories, tales of Emily Gwynne’s hope- 
less infatuation. The outcome of this was that Grayson 
Gwynne, himself so poor a parent, overheard at the 
club and elsewhere, remarks that revealed to what 
extent Emily in the past had been imprudent and un- 
wise. 

He went home to his boarding house, and in his 
wrath and fury turned on Emily. She in her turn 


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walked out of the house, and went as always in her 
troubles, to Colonel Te. The next day in the board- 
ing house parlor, witnessed by Grayson Gwynne and a 
few others, Emily became Mrs. Tecumseh Craig. 

Said ’Genie to Lucy, having come out to Ashe to 
talk over the amazing and incredible thing, “If I live 
to get to Heaven where, I hope, a record of the deeds 
of foolish old men, tribal survivals of a vanished senti- 
mental era, are kept, along with those of merely good 
and bad people; I want to find out what these two male 
widows of Windsor, Colonel Te and Emily’s father, 
said to her to break her spirit further, apathetic and 
indifferent as this already was, and bring her to it. 
What at the most was there to admit that her father 
after catechizing her, damned her? That she got back 
on a time at three in the morning from joy-riding 
alone with McHenry, and her father’s world got hold of 
it. And that his world got hold of it when she on an- 
other occasion, went alone to McHenry’s rooms. The 
rest of us do the first at pleasure, and think no more 
about it. And if it came to where it was necessary to 
go to his rooms to have it out with a man who’d lied 
to me, I and any of my crowd would do the last ! except 
that we’d then go away and brag our fill about it. And 
in that last clause of mine, note you, Lucy, lies the whole 
point. Emily acts according to her day; then her cour- 
age succumbs, and she judges what she’s done by the 
creeds these two old Poloniuses who’ve brought her up, 
impose on her. Remember when several years ago, 
she wanted to earn her living? And the violence, and 
the vituperation of the two? Piteous and helpless 
winged creature, that’s what she’s been; caught in the 
web of a wicked and false past, spun for her by these 
two antediluvian old spiders!” 


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323 


Said Helen Janvier on the subject, speaking to Lucy: 
“What Cousin Tecumseh lives on, nobody knows. And 
the Gwynnes haven’t a cent. Said Cousin Te to me, as 
I accompanied him to the boarding house and the 
wedding, ‘Of McHenry’s dastardly part in this, I 
have nothing to say. The defection of my kins- 
woman, Bettie, however, lays this act of restitution 
on me, the still honorable head, I hope, Helen, of the 
clan.’ ” 

Helen’s smile was mixed. “Except that it’s really 
happened, and here in our midst, Lucy, who among us 
would believe it? A modern poor broken Dulcinea, 
and two mad Don Quixotes, these old men, with not a 
modicum of everyday sense between them.” 

****** 

Lucy had a duty, to her more pressing than any. 
When she thought of Lyda Lelewel, her heart became 
cold and fctern within her, and she was determined to 
see her. Anne Janvier accompanied her, and while 
Lucy went in, waited for her in the car. Anne was 
thinner and darker these days. Lucy divined it was 
through grief for Stephen, and the knowledge drew the 
two together. 

****** 

Lucy and Lyda faced one another across the small 
room. Andrey, a boy of thirteen now, stood backed 
against the window, his fingers holding to the sill be- 
hind him. He looked from the one to the other of 
them not unfearfully. 

Through an open doorway was a bed unmade, 
though it was the middle of the afternoon; on a table 
seen through another doorway were unwashed dishes 
and broken food; a comb and brush were on the parlor 
table here at hand, and beside the sofa on the floor 


3 2 4 


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were slippers and a pair of stockings. A camisole lay 
on a chair. 

Lyda was handsome. She was grown a shade fuller 
which, with her defiant bold statue, became her. Her 
earrings, long and swinging, still were with her; also 
still in her service were her powder and her rouge pot 
and her lipstick. Over a petticoat of changeable silk 
she wore a none too fresh silk kimono, drawn loosely 
about her. 

She looked her visitor up and down. “If you’ve 
come here to ask me what I know about your husband, 
you’ve wasted your time. I don’t know anything.” 

Lucy was destined to be unfortunate in her every 
point of contact with this wife of Eugene Lelewel; in- 
variably to be stupid and blundering. 

“I’ve come to tell you what I know about your hus- 
band, Mrs. Lelewel. I’ve seen him.” 

“I don’t believe it; seen him where?” 

“In New York City. You must know, Mrs. Lelewel, 
that he told me he has written to you; and in these 
letters to you, were messages for me. I owe you no 
thanks that I got these messages as I did!” 

“He told you f That his letters to me, carried mes- 
sages for you? Did he suggest you come here too, and 
tell me it’s you } and not me, who’s seen him?” 

The further implication in Lucy’s words reached 
her. “What do you mean? No thanks to me that you 
got those messages?” 

Lucy had blundered, she saw this now; it was all 
hideously a mistake, her coming. She turned, believ- 
ing it was better that she go before she implicated the 
boy further. 

But he sprang toward her at this, and intercepted 


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325 


her. His body as ever was overthin, and his flaxen 
hair still dull and heavy, but his face and his poignant 
eyes were passionate. 

“I want you to know I spoke to you both those times 
over the telephone. Neither time did I have the let- 
ters; I told you the things my father wanted you to 
know as best I could remember them. I had to wait 
each time until I had a dime to pay for the call to you. 
Once I put my dime in; it clicked, and nobody answered. 
I had to wait a week until I had another.” 

Lyda turned on him, handsome and furious; this 
stab to her already galled and smarting pride was un- 
expected; her smoldering eyes blazed. She seized him 
by his thin shoulders, and flung him staggering across 
the floor. 

He brought up, shaken but collected. He showed 
no resentment; his eyes traveled from Lucy to Lyda, 
and returned to Lucy. So might an adult plead for a 
child. 

“Go; please, go. She’ll feel bad about it after a 
while. But not now. Please, go.” 

And still Lucy delayed, looking from Lyda who 
stood sullen, breathing hard, to the boy. She had done 
all that she should not; she had set mother against 
child; she had betrayed Andrey’s faith that put him in 
her hands. She was very unhappy; very troubled; 
very helpless. 

“Good-by, Andrey. There’s no debt I’ll ever owe I 
shall feel as my debt to you. You have my love; don’t 
forget that you have it; my gratitude; and my desire to 
express these. You know where I am. Call on me 
when you feel you can, or desire to.” 

* * * * * * 

The boy was much on her mind. She longed to send 


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him such things as a boy would care for; but Helen 
who still was with her at Ashe dissuaded her, showing 
her that it would be unwise. Then came that which 
caused her to forget him. 

It was one of those mild days that sometimes come 
in January; the bare trees soft against the blue sky; the 
landscape mildly tender. 

Kitty McKane had returned, and was established for 
the time in the household. She, Lucy, Helen, and little 
Stephen were walking about the lawn, the child prowl- 
ing beneath the chestnut tree for any salvage that 
might have been overlooked by himself and the 
squirrels. 

The Stephen Janvier car appeared. Mr. Janvier, 
Anne, and Evelyn got out. A cable had come from 
Warrington Adams; and it had not come to Lucy, the 
wife, but to the uncle. 

****** 

Willy Simpson, the son of the butcher, a husky 
stripling now, came pedaling on his bicycle around the 
drive at something before seven o’clock the next morn- 
ing, bringing as usual the morning paper to the door. 

He glanced up, the furtive eyes of youth sweeping 
the front of the house, as if he expected it to look in 
some sense different. For since last evening Willy had 
the news. Before starting with his papers this morn- 
ing, he read it afresh : 

JANVIER — Date of death unknown, 

Stephen Arnauld Janvier, in the prison 
camp of Termonde, Belgium. 


CHAPTER XXX 


I T long since was bedtime for the household, and 
the house was still. Lucy sat before a fitful fire in 
her bedroom. In her lap were some loose pages 
of cheap, poor paper. It had happened simply and 
naturally. Ellen and little Stephen came from the office 
with the afternoon’s mail. With a letter from an 
English boy lately home from prison in Germany, were 
these pages that months before were intrusted to him 
by Stephen. The lad with a companion, a boy from 
Glasgow, came out by way of Ghent, escaped prisoners, 
and remained there until the armistice. A third in 
their party, a Russian, was separated from them on 
their way out. 

Her face was quiet; if earlier she had shed tears, 
had gone down under the storm, this now was past. 
She had sorted the pages, there being one that was for 
her alone. She even smiled as she found and unfolded 
it anew, touching it with caressing fingers : 

I wish this letter could reach you before I am gone, but this 
is not to be. As you read it think of me as with you. As- 
sured that my arms are about you, look up that I may read as- 
surance in your eyes. 

I do not ask to read forgiveness; that were to undervalue 
your soul, and its grasp and understanding. Love, I know 
well, in all its abundance, I shall find. But one thing more 
show me, Lucy. Let me read in your eyes that you forgive 
me the harder task of the future that I who go before, leave 
to you left behind. 


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She was weeping again, quietly, making no effort 
to stay the tears as they rolled down her cheeks. 

Be father for me, as well as in yourself mother, my darling, 
to our child. How will I in the final summing have failed 
to him, I wonder ? How left unpaid to him, my debt of father- 
hood? 

There is time with us here in our prison camps for reflection 
in variety, Lucy. Will my son be able to read for himself in 
my actions as he will come to see them, intrinsic integrity of 
soul on my part? 

I myself do not know. When I think of what I asked of 
you, of what I in person brought on you, I only can pray God 
and you, my darling, that you alike be merciful to me in your 
judgments of me. 

Along one line I am convinced I am not wrong. Do not 
you permit your faith to fail you in the ultimate outcome, Lucy. 
The average people in every civilization have been the centers 
of safety and of progress. When these fail, the world fails. 
These average men and women wherever placed, seeing each 
to his personal integrity, to his individual honorable perform- 
ance, the world must, and will, swing on. 

Let me plead this on my part to seeming failures to other 
claims; the way for me to this individual honorable perform- 
ance, this personal integrity, seemed in my eyes the one I fol- 
lowed to this, I admit, inglorious cul-de-sac , and futile end. 

As to the women I have known best in my life ; my mother ; 
aunt Philippa; aunt Anne; Kitty; you ; the least of these as I 
see now, has given me more than I appear to myself to have 
given in all. Oh, my darling 

And still she sat there. That the night was gone, 
and the pale gray of coming day appeared in her 
windows, concerned her not at all. 

She thought of Stephen in the successive stages 
through which she knew him; Stephen in his exuber- 


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329 


ance; in his amativeness; in his hour of decision; in his 
turning from her and life to an abhorrent business of 
legalized butcheries ending for himself in death. The 
test of an act comes after its completion. 

She sat thinking. Was this act of Stephen’s sound? 
What were its after results? Could she live by it? 
As we must and do live by and through great acts? A 
truly great act sheds light and soul-sustenance and 
vitality; being a spiritual sun to those who walk the 
earth. Had Stephen’s act that summons to the living 
to surpass themselves, that is the abiding quality of the 
great act? 

She thought of him as he was; the deep and sweet 
humor; the smiling patience; the whimsical contempla- 
tion, the tolerant attitude. She thought of her grand- 
mother; she thought of Eugene Lelewel. Archtypes 
these two seemed now, of trends opposed to the posi- 
tion of Stephen. The one, her grandmother, was at 
war from start of life to its finish with the individual 
will that opposed itself to her own. The other, Eu- 
gene, was at war with society as its general will was 
opposed to his own. Was it that Stephen warred 
against those forces that were opposed to the will and 
to the best interests of the majority? 

The letter from the English lad set forth that from 
the first, with the confinement and fare of prison life, 
there was little hope for Stephen. He was entirely 
practical, said the letter. He left no efforts untried 
to remedy his situation. These being done, said the 
letter quaintly, “he, like the bells in the belfries of 
Ghent on the day of the armistice, gave himself over 
among his mates to joyful carillons” 


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Yes, Lucy saw it now. As Stephen’s son, whom he 
had never seen, ran before his mother in the fields pur- 
suing butterflies ; so the older Stephen pursued joy. As 
her lover he had seized her by the hand, whose soul was 
overshadowed by many a doubt and question between it 
and the sun, and raced her with him to the hilltops of 
happiness as it were, and bade her look upon the world 
and see with God who made it, and not with man who 
mars it, that it is good. 

And with this she suddenly cried out, and piteously : 

“Stephen!” she cried; “Stephen!” 

So long as life shall continue for Lucy, ten years, 
twenty, fifty years to come, she will know that at this 
moment Stephen, her husband, bent over her and kissed 
her. 

* * * * * * 

The square of dim gray framed by each window in 
the room, paled. And still she sat there. 

She was thinking of the succeeding thousands who 
are wretched; the ignorant, the overcrowded, the under- 
fed; the diseased, the criminally abnormal, the prosti- 
tuted, the exploited. She thought of these unfortunates 
the world around, in her own country, and elsewhere; 
and she asked herself if it is indeed because of the sta- 
bility, the honorable individual endeavor, the integrity 
of the average many, that these things at whatsoever 
time in the world’s history, have been, and will be made 
better ? 

Darest thou now, O Soul? So spoke some challenge 
within her. 

And in the moment she seemed to know what she was 
for; seemed to rise to this challenge that she live; live 
on; surely, courageously, and endure; seemed conscious 


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331 


of a thousand gleams within her soul like light irradiat- 
ing tears; conscious of a thousand seeds of former 
faiths starting to life again. She and she alone was 
answerable ; whether or not she furnish her part toward 
the universal soul! 


CHAPTER XXXI 


I N February Lucy and Helen, taking little Stephen 
with them, went to New York to meet Warrington 
on his return. Ellen, and this time at her own 
request, accompanied them. She had news of her own. 
Julius, the father of the motherless baby left by Ellen 
at Ashe in the care of Mom Belle Preston, was on the 
seas on his way home. The men of the 369th Regi- 
ment, Negro veterans, largely recruited from New 
York City, were due to reach port any day. 

With them was Lieut. James Europe, and his now 
famous band. Of this band was Julius Buck ; the kettle- 
drum on which he so lustily performed being one of the 
five presented by the French to the regiment, that had 
given good account of itself in Champagne, at Chateau 
Thierry, at the St. Mihiel salient, and in the Argonne. 
Ellen went to meet Julius, carrying with her the news 
of Sally’s death. 

Warrington came in ahead of the ship bringing the 
regiment. On the day that New York welcomed these 
colored soldiers home, the first veteran regiment of 
New York troops, white or colored, to return, he se- 
cured seats near the reviewing stand at 60th Street; and 
took the four, Helen, Lucy, Stephen and Ellen, to see 
the parade. 

Thousands of black men and women and children 
lined the sidewalks, with similar thousands of their 
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333 


white fellow creatures. Thousands of flags held aloft 
in their hands, fluttered; American flags, service flags, 
“Welcome Home” banners. Thousands of rattle- 
snakes, the emblem of the 369th, each coiled ready to 
strike, appeared amid these crowding thousands every- 
where; in buttonholes, on hatbands, on banners. 

Lucy, beside Ellen on the wooden seat, above the 
crowd, sat pale and silent. She recalled the pageants 
and parades of Fifth Avenue that she so recently had 
seen devoted to war. She thought of a prison camp in 
Belgium. And she prayed God that it had been possible 
that these cheering thousands here to-day might have 
gazed on a march up Fifth Avenue, not of the returning, 
the alive, but of the dead in this war. 

She somewhere had seen it estimated as to the time 
this would take. She in fancy saw this host of the dead 
now. The British dead she saw start at daybreak, 
twenty abreast. Until sundown she saw them march, and 
the next day, and the next, and the next. For ten days 
the British dead pass in review. For eleven days more, 
the French dead file along this Avenue of The Allies. 
The Russians pass for five weeks more. Two months 
and a half, it takes, for the allied dead to pass. The 
enemy dead follow for six weeks. Four months in all, 
men killed in this war, pass steadily along Fifth Avenue, 
twenty abreast. For four months young men, dead be- 
fore their time, go steadily by. 

Young men! And the old men are where as the 
young dead file by? The old men sit the while in coun- 
cil, as is the way with these things; negotiating treaties, 
that in the nature of them are the forerunners of new 
wars wherein young men shall die! Could such a 
pageant of these young dead file by the thousands 
who at this moment stood here, lining the sidewalks of 


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Fifth Avenue, would they ever again permit war , as an 
instrument of old men’s governments? 

* * * * * * 

She heard Ellen, the stoic, who sat here beside her, 
breathe hard. No march of death was this coming 
now up Fifth Avenue. These black men forming the 
369th Infantry, led by their white Colonel walking at 
the head of his men in the face of these cheering thou- 
sands of New York’s populace turned out to welcome 
them, were very much alive. 

They were big men. They swung up the Avenue, 
their rows of bayonets glancing in the sun, dull-painted 
steel basins on their heads, with the easy precision of 
men, long masters of the technique of their calling; their 
step springy, with the lilt and swagger of men proud 
of themselves and their organization; their files never 
wavering for an instant at the sound of the plaudits, and 
the cheers along the way. The showers of cigarettes 
and of candy descending upon them as they marched, 
disturbed them not at all in their discipline ; rarely did 
a man in the ranks give a sign of recognition of these 
tokens; only here a flash of white teeth; and there a 
broadened smile as promptly disappearing. 

James Europe marched at the head with his band. 
Julius Buck of Ashe, Kentucky, with the roll and swag- 
ger of the returning hero indeed, and unaware of the 
news Ellen brought him, mightily beat his kettledrum. 

Lucy turned to Ellen now. In ordinary passive, in 
general taciturn, the tall, old woman, who was nearer 
seventy than sixty, was on her feet. The lesser sorrow 
she brought was forgotten in the greater glory she 
beheld. The head of Ellen was up-flung; the tears that 
rained down her cheeks were tears of jubilation. 


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335 


Ellen’s faith in her race, that had been silent as it was 
watchful suddenly had flowered ! 

****** 

Two days later the members of the 369th were mus- 
tered out. The situation for Ellen had its complica- 
tions. She met these difficulties herself. Julius would 
not be permitted to come to the hotel to see her, 
but she had friends in New York City of her own color. 
It was arranged that he, coming in from camp, should 
proceed on uptown to a subway station in Harlem. 
She would meet him here, and they would go together 
to her friends. Her pride in the boy, and her misery at 
the news she brought him, alike were deep as they 
were wordless. 

****** 
Warrington, on this same day, shortly after one 
o’clock, came hurrying to Lucy and Helen at their hotel. 
Lucy met him with an early afternoon paper in her 
hand. She and Helen had the news he came to bring 
them. A scare head across the paper set forth the 
business : 

RACE RIOT IN HARLEM 

RETURNED NEGRO SOLDIER 
SHOT 

SAID TO BE FROM ASHE, KENTUCKY 

Warrington knew the ropes; knew the procedures; 
knew where to go; and where to take Lucy. Helen 
went with her, leaving the child at the hotel with a 
maid. At the police station they heard the story; and 
were given an address where, so they were told, they 
would find Ellen with her friends. It was borne in on 


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Lucy that were the situation reversed, Ellen would know 
the address of Lucy’s friends. Ellen had been part 
with her in her every great and small experience of joy 
and of sorrow in her life ; had stood by her and with her ; 
the pages of Lucy’s life open to her. 

And what in her turn did she know of Ellen’s ex- 
periences? Of Ellen’s joys and sorrows? She did 
not know even the names of these, Ellen’s friends. 
She knew nothing of Ellen’s views; of her thoughts on 
any subject; of her thoughts for that matter, about 
Lucy Wing herself. 

It was a story brief enough. Lucy as she heard it 
rehearsed at the police station, could see it all. The 
details she read afterward in the papers. Julius, 
banjo-king of jazz-players; member of Lieut. Europe’s 
band; twenty-four years old, full of swagger, full of 
strut, was jostled by a white man as he and his aunt 
emerged from the subway onto the sidewalk, and had 
retaliated. 

“Run along, now,” said Julius, as reported. 
“There’s your way, and this is mine.” 

The white man struck Julius who struck back. The 
mulatto boy was in his uniform; he wore stripes of two 
sorts, for service, and for wounds; and he wore a 
medal. His confidence in these as his credentials ap- 
parently was great, as doubtless was his faith in that 
welcome of two days since, when he and his companions 
swung up Fifth Avenue. His teeth flashed as he faced 
about, greeting the policeman who here appeared; “a 
coon smile, all teeth and good humor,” as a witness said. 

“Ain’t no man going to lay hands on this soldier, 
what’s me, this day,” he claimed. A dozen of his race 
upsprung as by magic agreed with him. They were 
outnumbered by a crowd of whites as quickly gathered. 


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337 


The noon paper put it tersely: “The Negro soldier 
was killed by a pistol shot through the heart, at the 
hands of an unknown person, one of a crowd of whites 
come to the assistance of the policeman who was trying 
to arrest him.” 

Lucy’s lips, as her eyes lifted to Warrington’s, and 
then to Helen’s, at the close of the story, moved stiffly. 

“We smile at them when they please us; we shoot 
them down, or lynch them, when they displease us. 
Yellow y yellow, YELLOW! My race and color are 
yellow! Yellow as Germany when she struck at 
smaller, weaker Belgium!” 

****** 

They went in search of Ellen. They found her in 
an apartment house, creditable and pleasing. A Negro 
girl in a uniform took them up in an elevator. A Negro 
woman opened the door to them, herself courteous and 
comely. She wore a black dress, and a service pin with 
two citations. 

She ushered them into a room where they found 
Ellen. It was a pleasant room flooded with the after- 
noon February sun, scrupulously in order, and fur- 
nished with a cheerful rug, upholstered chairs and sofa, 
a piano, a shelf of books, a canary in a cage, and a fern 
in a pot on the window sill. 

Ellen was standing in the center of the room as they 
entered. Her decent black hat was on a chair near by. 
Her head thus bare alike of hat or the accustomed 
square of muslin, one saw as it were for the first time, 
that the frost of years had more than touched her hair. 

Her eyes lifted and she looked at Lucy, at Helen, at 
Warrington, dully. The ordinary copper hue of her 
face with its high cheek-bones, had given place to a 
grayish pallor, ashy and deathlike ; her lips were blue. 


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The boy had been shot down at her feet, within a few 
short moments of her meeting him, and it was as though 
she and her wits were staggering beneath the enormity 
of the shock. 

Somber these eyes were, and so stricken with the 
reproach of their poignant suffering, they might have 
been not those of one tall and straight old Negro 
woman; but of her race. 

She spoke in a monotonous voice: “I’ve money of 
my own laid away; there’s the money in the bank that 
ol’ Miss left me; I want to take my boy home.” 

* * * * * * 

It was three days after Lucy, Helen, and Ellen 
reached Ashe, returned with Julius in his coffin, wearing 
his uniform, his stripes, and his medal, that Ellen had 
her stroke. 


CHAPTER XXXII 


YDA LELEWEL went to and fro, from parlor 



to bedroom, and kitchen, directing the activities 


“■ — * of two shabby men in overcoats and derby hats. 
As a price was fixed upon between these second-hand 
dealers and Lyda, each piece of furniture, or fur- 
nishing in turn, was removed by the men to their 
wagon at the curb below. 

Andrey, returning from school, came into the half- 
denuded rooms and the confusion. His eyes, habitually 
grave and troubled, as they turned on his mother, be- 
trayed alarm. 

“Pack your clothes,” she told him, “all of ’em. Put 
’em in this suitcase.” 

To do this did not take the boy long; a second cheap 
suit, about outgrown; a second suit of underwear; stock- 
ings good and bad; some odds and ends; these were 
Andrey’s possessions. 

She tossed him a pair of roller skates and a neck- 
tie. “Put ’em in if you want ’em.” 

He put them in. 

She banged on a table half a loaf of bread, some cold 
potatoes, and half a box of sardines. They sat down 
to their meal. The kitchen-safe now being emptied, it 
was set upon by the two men and carried out the door. 
When in time they carried out the kitchen table, the 
rooms were bare of everything but Lyda’s trunk and 
Andrey’s suitcase; and they returned no more. 


339 


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Lyda, with an armful of clothes, her comb and brush, 
rouge pot, hand glass, and the rest of it, went into the 
cubby-hole called a bathroom. Andrey sat on his suit- 
case and waited. It was past mid-afternoon. He had 
learned long since to take his mother as he found her, 
there being days when she never spoke to him; days 
when he came from school to find her gone. He neither 
knew at such times where she was, nor when she would 
return. He got his breakfast always, and at other 
times for his meals, took what he found in the safe. 

She emerged with her toilet made, her showy 
figure boldly outlined by her dress, and on her head a 
wide-brimmed hat with plumes. She put the garments 
she had taken off in her trunk, lowered the lid, and 
locked it. The empty room echoed to her footfalls. 
Almost at the moment the honk of a car came up from 
the street below. 

She directed the boy: “Help the man bring my 
trunk down when I send him up. I paid the rent this 
morning. Turn the key in the door after you get your 
suitcase, and leave it downstairs as you come. I’ll 
wait for you on the pavement.” 

These things in turn being done, he with ‘his suitcase 
joined Lyda, the taxicab churning at the curb. And 
then the incredible happened. Taking Andrey’s hand, 
and closing his fingers on some object that she pressed 
into his palm, Lyda spoke curtly : 

“Tell her for me, since she took first your father 
from me, and then you, she can have you-. Jake Hill- 
man’s ordered off to another store in the chain, and 
I’m off with him.” 

The door closed upon her with a bang, the car 
sprang forward, turned the corner and disappeared 
from the boy’s unbelieving gaze. 


MARCH ON 


34i 


And still he stood, planted on the curb, dazed with 
the shock; and still he gazed after the vanished cab. 

It had rained during the day, a warm, mild March 
pour, but now had cleared; the sun, a glinting white 
ball, was descending in the drab west above the roofs, 
pallid through a blanket of city smoke and misty damp- 
ness. The boy opened his palm, and his gaze traveled 
to the object in it. It was a slip of pink paper, a trolley- 
ticket which as he brought it closer and examined it, 
he saw was punched at the station called Ashe. 

He looked behind him at the house. Mrs. Duggan, 
from whom they rented, was an impeccable person, past 
middle-age, and she hated Lyda. 

He had no money; had Lyda planned it so? He had 
this trolley ticket only, that she had put in his hand. 

Where, he wondered, was his father? He had wor- 
shiped his father, had given him his love, his adora- 
tion, his loyalty; where was he now? The hand closed 
slowly, closed painfully and despairingly on the bit of 
paper; and a burning red of humiliation upwelled from 
neck and then throat, and suffused the sensitive, small 
face. He thought of the near-by unfenced lumber yard 
that overlooked the murky water of the creek that 
wound past mill and factory. He would sit here among 
the piles of stacked planks, and think what of himself, 
and for himself, he could do. 

It was night when the flashing lantern of the yard 
watchman drove him back to the streets. He wan- 
dered here until a drizzling rain descended, and his 
courage failed him. 

* * * * * * 

It was past eleven that night when Andrey appeared 
at Ashe. Kitty McKane and Lucy came down them- 
selves to answer the bell. The light from the hall 


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fell on him, a small figure standing beyond the doorsill. 
Haggard about the mouth, and desperate as to the eyes, 
he lifted his face to the two women. Rain gleamed on 
his suitcase, and on his face. There was a brisk down- 
pour, and his clothes were soaked. He explained. 

“My mother sold our things and went off.” 

He hesitated, then went on, repeating those terrible 
final words flung back at him by Lyda, his mother, as 
she entered the cab. 

“She said if Eugene didn’t feel a father to me, she 
didn’t see why she should feel a mother. That it 
might have been different if I were like other children; 
but I wasn’t.” 


CHAPTER XXXIII 


I T was December, 1920, a year and more later. 
Warrington Adams sat with a letter from Lucy 
in his hand. It was open, but as yet unread. 

He was thinking of her as he last had seen her, some 
months ago here in New York. He had perceived 
a woman coming toward him along the street, slim and 
elegant, leading a child, a boy of five, straight and 
handsome. It was Lucy, in his eyes beautiful as never 
would be any other woman. Perceiving him as she ap- 
proached, she smiled in welcome, her eyes deep and 
sweet. 

He had read her eyes ere this; and through these, 
her heart; and knew, and bowed his head. Whatever 
in the years ahead, Time with its healing had for her, 
there was no place for him beyond that now held. 
Oh, lover, lover that he was ! that this should come to 
him! The want of her; the cruel, terrible want of 
her forever here; and forever unconfessed. 

Yet he knew himself, and knew that he could do it. 
He knew that he would love on ; satisfying himself from 
time to time through contact with her; refreshed with a 
look on her as the parched earth is refreshed with the 
dew. His friendship should be useful to her as he 
could make it; full of tranquillity; wise with considered 
counsel and watchings. No betrayal should there be 
ever of his madness; of his beating pulses in his heaving 
breast. 


34 3 


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He knew the direction of her thoughts as regarded 
him, as though she had voiced them. The pinions on 
which her fancy soared in his behalf were wings lent 
by her affection for him; the direction of her impulse, 
born of the intensity of her own desire. She saw in this 
companion swinging along the street beside her on his 
crutch, the arriving great editor, arisen for the need of 
the day and the hour, as she read these . She saw 
him as ultimately one of the brains behind the news of 
each day which shall strive to make the world smaller 
by making its relations closer; saw him as a factor in a 
directing energy toward a rational internationalization 
of thought that in her belief, far more than treaties, 
shall bring about world understanding and prevent 
war. 

And he knew, great lover of one woman, how she , 
seen through his conviction as to the world’s unchang- 
ing need, appeared to him. He knew that he, through 
the years ahead, saw her as Woman , eternal and abid- 
ing; bigger in herself than through any perquisites that 
may be added to her; stable, yearning, pitiful, 
protecting. 

Her gaze as he was aware as they walked along, 
was fondly on him. His eyes were withdrawn from 
her, and looked afar. Deep in them were all the pain 
and the unmeasured questionings of life; but over and 
above these was a grimness, a will to endure; to which 
all else in the man was the servant, and not the master. 

He once, in the days of her earlier stress, had an- 
swered a challenging question put by her to him : 

“No,” he had admitted, “I don’t think there are 
overly many of us who are too happy.” 

“Then why do we keep on? Why do we each try at 
doing our part? Why do you yourself, Warrington? 


MARCH ON 


345 


Who have no great illusions, nor deceive yourself as to 
this fact? Why do you keep on?” 

“I reckon with us all it’s to keep the record straight 
if for no other reason, Lucy.” 

****** 

He turned to the letter in his hand, and began to 
read: 

Dear Warrington : 

November 2, 1920, is a month now come and gone; we 
women in these United States as a whole, have cast our first 
electoral vote, and the situation with some of us has not been 
without its humorous aspect. But I will come back to this 
claim about the humor presently. 

For first, oh, Warrington, I must tell you again, as in this 
last year and more, Fve told you before: Life here at Ashe in 
my house and home that I do so love, has lost its grace, its 
charm ; that, alas, I so have taken for granted. 

I am aghast because I am so helpless to prevent this; or to 
remedy it. Is it another, a lesser manifestation of the general 
chaos, the collapse of older systems, that since the war we are 
everywhere seeing? 

I have not a servant in the house that I ever had before. 
Thomas Harris and Viola, his wife, and Mom Belle Preston, 
left me a year ago, retiring from service. Ellen and Jerry and 
little Julius live now in a cottage of their own with its acre of 
ground. 

On the outside I still have Henry as chauffeur; and Jerry 
comes to me by the day, arriving at eight, and leaving at five. 

What am I and mine to him now, this arrangement seems 
to say? His part is to give me eight hours’ work for eight 
hours’ pay, and this being done, to return to his own life, and 
his own affairs. 

A half-grown Negro girl, a neighbor’s daughter, looks after 
and does for Ellen and the child, who now is three years old. 
Ellen has had her second stroke, and is failing generally; held 
to life, so the doctors say, by her passionate devotion to this child 


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of Julius, the nephew. She has four thousand dollars in bank; 
one thousand of this, and her cottage and its acre of ground, 
were left her by grandmother. Her jealous triumph is that she 
has these to leave to the child. 

With this withdrawal of the two, Jerry and Ellen, from be- 
neath my roof to a roof of their own, the life of their own race 
and its affairs, as with Thomas and Viola, seemed to close in 
upon them, and engulf them in its sweep and current. I be- 
came secondary with them overnight, almost it seemed, and in 
my own eyes, a stranger to them. 

I have in my kitchen a pleasant young colored woman who 
intends to leave me at Christmas. Her plans were laid to ma- 
ture by this date when she came to me. She is to be a travel- 
ing state superintendent of colored Sunday schools. She is in- 
telligent and well-mannered, and no doubt will make a success 
of her new work. I am an incident with her on her way to 
things of greater moment and desirability. I feel with her, and 
for her, and applaud her laudable ambitions. 

But, as I have said, the grace of life for me is gone. My 
butler is a pale and reticent young colored man whose eye as 
he places my demi-tasse before me at dinner is on the clock. He 
hopes to catch the earliest trolley possible into the city where 
he is taking an evening course in stenography and typewriting. 
He plans at the conclusion of this course to enter the office of 
a local colored insurance company. 

And I am nothing to any of them who, in my complacent 
security, thought I was so much. It could not have come to this 
had grandmother still been here. I am not willing to believe 
the ties between her and these colored members of her house- 
hold were not real and enduring. 

Is the fault ours that the affection of this lovable people is 
no longer ours? I’m afraid it is, Warrington. I cannot tell 
you how terrifying it is to me, until recently so secure within my 
fatuous blindness, to see the old bridges between us two peoples 
living here in the south together going down all about me, and 
the swift waters of separate interests racing between. 

November 2 d came and went. The day before the election 


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347 


I had a message through Jerry from Ellen. She, Mom Belle 
Preston, and Viola, wanted to cast their votes; all three are 
old, the road from their three homes which are off the pike, is 
bad, and they looked to me to see they could get to Ashe, and do 
so. Like children still in that they looked to me for this, I 
loved them for it; and arranged that Henry should fetch the 
three in the car, and Jerry bring Ellen’s wheeling chair ahead in 
my wagon. 

You know how strongly I feel about the issue in the election; 
the League of Nations, as it seems to me, being the one thing 
to look to, out of the wreck of all that my Stephen supposed 
he gave his life for. 

I did no electioneering among these colored women ; I would 
have scorned to; I respect their loyalty. They saw in their 
first vote cast, a debt paid to that power that sixty years ago 
freed their race; and they as a race, and as individuals, in- 
variably are loyal to an obligation that they recognize. 

The light for them through their franchise, must come from 
within, if we would not have them exploited. Some day it will 
break for these Negro women, and it will be better for all con- 
cerned, white and black, republican and democrat, when that 
times comes; and the Negro woman sees that through party 
solidarity, her race does us all, white and black, alike wrong. 

We mustered in front of the post office, I with an extra rug 
for Ellen’s knees, as she sat in the wheeling chair, and also a 
thermos bottle of hot coffee for her, for the day was raw and 
cold, and she is very frail. My present young woman cook, 
and my young housemaid, were there too, and we all, Viola and 
Mom Belle included, were in line together. 

I thought of grandmother and smiled to myself. Grand- 
mother for forty years, gave herself, her time, brain, and for- 
tune, to gain for us women what we exercised this day ; primarily 
with her to the end that through enfranchised woman there 
should come about an end to armament, and so to war. 

For the first time in the history of any treaty drawn up for 
the world, as you and I have remarked on, in the treaty of 
Versailles there is full recognition of the black race; Negro 


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representatives from Haiti and Liberia signing it, the voice of 
the Negro through these two plenipotentiaries, being heard for 
the first time in a congress of nations; a parliament where the 
Negro may present any matter “within the sphere of action of 
The League, or affecting the peace of the world.” Also the 
Versailles treaty recognizes “racial and popular rights to the 
freedom of self-government.” 

I smiled, and thought of grandmother, as I told you just 
now, Warrington, and this is why: 

I saw Ellen safely in the booth first; then followed her; 
myself succeeded by Viola, Mom Belle, and then by Mary, my 
modern and intelligent young colored woman cook ; the colored 
housemaid completing the line. I cast my one vote for The 
League of Nations; and they cast their five votes against it! 
Grandmother in the try-out was hoist by her own petard ! 

These colored women were here in force, old and young and 
middle-aged; quiet determination in their faces to accomplish 
what they came for. I was conscious of a new spirit among 
them, a new carriage of themselves, as it were inwardly and 
outwardly. Race consciousness with them has come, and a 
race solidarity. 

The genie has escaped from the bottle; do not let us believe 
that we through the desire to have it so, can put this spirit of 
the black race back again. Do not let us believe that we, if 
we could, would have it back again. Better that we consider 
the situation as it is, and how, with justice to all, it shall be met. 
That we ask of ourselves, and of history, if a race no longer in 
spirit a subject race, can exist within another; another that 
perforce in blood, is and must be, an alien race? Better that 
we and they wonder, with our eyes toward Africa, if a hegira 
of a nature never before contemplated be possible. 

* * * * * *• * 

Thank you, Warrington, for meeting Andrey at his station 
and getting him across town, and started safely home here to 
Stephen and Kitty and me, for Thanksgiving. No doubt it 
seemed to you unreasonable and even foolish of me to have him 


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349 


come for these few days. But the boy is peculiar, as you know, 
and singularly unhappy and lonely. 

I do not remember if I told you that he seems irrevocably 
cut off, through his earlier training by Eugene, from the 
spiritual reassurance that the average child has through a belief 
in a Divine Power. 

The first Sunday that Andrey was with us here at Ashe, a 
year and a half ago, I took it for granted that he would go 
across the road to church with little Stephen and me, with really 
no thought beyond the idea of including him in our movements. 

Accompanying us on the walk through the woodland, and 
across the road, he stopped at the church door. He was very 
thin then, his face so pallid as to appear to be gray, and I think 
he had the most poignantly unhappy eyes I ever saw in human 
creature's face. He spoke briefly. 

“There's nothing here for me." 

I’ve never urged him since. He is reasonable, biddable and 
fair. What he gets out of his chapel attendance at school, and 
the spiritual oversight in general there, I can’t say. The head 
of the school and his teachers know his story, and he knows that 
they do. 

Only when a boy at the school suffers in some sense that to 
Andrey seems a worldly disqualification, — owes his presence 
there, say, to a scholarship — will Andrey respond to any ad- 
vances; and make any effort toward what should be, for him, 
permanent friendships. I live to tell Eugene Lelewel if ever 
he returns, that he in no sense, was honest with his son. 

He said he existed to knock down the barriers between na- 
tions, through removing these barriers in the minds of the chil- 
dren of the proletariat. He put up as many barriers as ever 
he removed in Andrey’s mind ; he erected partitions of his own 
there ; between man and God ; between class and class ; between 
parents and child. I hope I yet may tell him so. 

I told you at the start of Andrey’s distress of mind over what 
he piteously feels is the obligation. He calls it the debt. I 
could not then, nor can I altogether yet, make him see that I 


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am the original debtor. And further that affection between free 
souls knows no debt. 

“You have gifts of the mind, Andrey, and must look to these 
to best meet your part in life,” I tell him. “For you and me 
alike not to see this, would be stupid ; and taking it as our work- 
ing proposition, put it across.” 

He is very tragic. From the start he said : 

“I have no mother; but my father will come for me, and he 
will make it right.” 

I showed him finally, because it seemed to me I ought, that 
his father, like the father of my little Stephen, may have paid 
with his life in his turn for his especial political faith. He 
agrees now as to the chances of this. How strange it is ! Who 
am I, unproven myself, and hunting for an outlet, to have upon 
my hands this gifted and tragic Slav boy ? 

He spoke suddenly to me while here at Thanksgiving. It 
shows where his thoughts continually are. 

“But you do believe that my father if alive, will come for 
me?” 

“Andrey,” I said, “let us both believe it.” 

******* 

I seem purposeless to myself, Warrington. Am I to live on 
here at Ashe, in an atmosphere of comfort, my most gigantic 
effort being the achieving of the obvious duties of each succeed- 
ing day? 

Is it enough that I preserve to little Stephen a home, and 
certain of the traditions which, if we believe in America and 
a popular government at all, he has a right to? Traditions 
come down to us, that you and I and his father have seen work- 
ing, and that you and I believe will work still? 

I long for effort; long for the driving and impelling force of 
some great necessity. Yet I’m much too humble to believe, or 
to pretend, that I’m capable in myself of any especial thing, 
either through training, or through any natural gifts. 

That I am of my day, probably is the explanation ; for I am 
confessing to you that I am hideously restless; am conscious 


MARCH ON 


35i 


within myself of a mighty and a sweeping, outward and onward 
surge ! 

Is it, or is it not, a necessary part to a positive end, that some 
women at this time of flux and flow stay put ? Do not be dis- 
mayed that I fear to hear you say to me, “Yes.” An answer 
that will fall like a knell on the ears of my panting, straining 
soul. 

And will I heed it? And more, should I heed it? 

Lucy. 


(i) 


THE END 






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